Question

Which group was key to McKinley's victory in the presidential election of 1896?

Answer 1

Cleveland and his conservative, pro-business Bourbon Democrats were overthrown and the Democrats nominated firebrand William Jennings Bryan, who picked up Populist support and crusaded against banks, railroads, and the moneyed East, promising that Free Silver would pump money into the economy and destroy the wicked. McKinley and Hanna fought back, inventing new techniques in the most heated election campaign in American history. McKinley promised that high tariffs would benefit all Americans--and he introduced the goal of a pluralistic America whereby all Americans of whatever race or ethnicity would share in prosperity. He attacked free silver as dishonesty, and by speaking to hundreds of thousands of voters and organizing massive parades in every town and city in the North, McKinley and Hanna demonstrated they represented the American majority. McKinley won in a landslide, carrying the entire East and Midwest and parts of the West. He won huge majorities in most cities, and switched the large German American vote to the GOP, along with most factory and railroad workers, then middle classes, and the more prosperous farmers. The election of 1896 realigned American politics, as 1896 was a critical election marking the dividing line between the Third Party System of the Civil War and Gilded Age, and the Fourth Party System, usually called the Progressive Era.
Source: http://www.conservapedia.com/William_McK...