For the first time in American history, national conventions were held to nominate candidates for president and vice president in 1832. The election pitted Andrew Jackson against
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National Republican Henry Clay. (The Whig party would form from the remnants of the old National Republican Party during Jackson's second term.) Jackson named Martin van Buren as his vice presidential running mate. John Sergeant of Pennsylvania ran with Clay. Two minor parties also put up candidates.
The chief issue of the election was the National Bank, discussed above. Jackson's opponents who sought to use the bank as an issue to unseat him found that their plan backfired. A secondary issue was Jackson's veto of the Maysville Road Bill in 1830. The bill would have provided federal funds to construct a road from Maysville to Lexington, Kentucky. Jackson's veto message, drafted by Secretary of State Martin van Buren, stated that federal funds could properly be "of a general, not local, national, not State," character. He also took issue with providing funds to a private corporation:
A course of policy destined to witness events like these cannot be benefited by a legislation which tolerates a scramble for appropriations that have no relation to any general system of improvement, and whose good effects must of necessity be very limited.
Congressional opponents of the bill had included future president James K. Polk of Tennessee, a staunch Jackson support later known as "Young Hickory."
The outcome of the election was a huge victory for Jackson, the people's man. He won despite charges that he saw himself as "King Andrew" who could veto anything he did not like. The election also spelled the end of Henry Clay's National-Republican Party. Jackson and van Buren got 688,242 popular and 219 electoral votes to Clay's 530,189 popular and 49 electoral votes. Minor parties took some anti-Jackson votes away from Clay.
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