Despite being Polk's home state and the state he once served as the governor of,Tennessee voted for theWhig candidate,Henry Clay, overDemocratic candidateJames K. Polk. Clay won Tennessee by a very narrow margin of 123 votes (0.10%).James K. Polk is one of 4 presidents to lose his state of residence in a successful presidential bid. The others areWoodrow Wilson in 1916,Richard Nixon in 1968, andDonald Trump in 2016, and Polk is the only one of the four to do so without ever winning either their state of birth or residence in any presidential election.
This election marked the third time consecutively that Polk had lost a statewide election in Tennessee. The previous two were in the1841 and1843 gubernatorial elections.[2][3]
