A dark horse is a previously lesser-known person or thing that emerges to prominence in a situation, especially in a competition involving multiple rivals, or a contestant that on paper should be unlikely to succeed but yet still might. Origin The term began as horse racing parlance for a race horse that is unknown to gamblers and thus difficult to establish betting odds for. The first known mention of the concept is in Benjamin Disraeli's novel The Young Duke (1831). Disraeli's protagonist, the Duke of St. James, attends a horse race with a surprise finish: "A dark horse which had never been thought of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph." Politics The concept has been used in political contexts in such countries as Iran, Philippines, Russia, Egypt, Finland, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Politically, the concept came to the United States in the nineteenth century when it was first applied to James K. Polk, a relatively unknown Tennessee politician who won the Democratic Party's 1844 presidential nomination over a host of better-known candidates. Polk won the nomination on the ninth ballot at his party's national nominating convention, and went on to become the country's eleventh president. Other successful dark horse candidates for the United States presidency include: Franklin Pierce, chosen as the Democratic nominee and later elected the fourteenth president in 1852. Abraham Lincoln, chosen as the Republican nominee and elected as the sixteenth president in 1860. Rutherford B. Hayes, elected the nineteenth president in 1876. James A. Garfield, elected the twentieth president in 1880. Warren G. Harding, Senator from Ohio, elected the twenty-ninth president in 1920 after his surprise nomination. Harry S. Truman, Vice-President and former Senator from Missouri and thirty-third president, was virtually unknown to the American people when he succeeded President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. Truman was considered a lame duck President with no chance of winning against Republican nominee and New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, yet managed to shock the world by emerging victorious in the 1948 United States presidential election – widely considered one of the biggest upsets in American history. Jimmy Carter, former Governor of Georgia elected the thirty-ninth president in 1976; in the beginning of that same year, Carter was relatively unknown outside his home state of Georgia but went on to win the