[108]
There was no uniform election day in 1844; states voted between November 1 and 12.[109] Polk won the election with 49.5% of the popular vote and 170 of the 275 electoral votes.[110] Becoming the first president elected despite losing his state of residence (Tennessee),[109] Polk also lost his birth state, North Carolina. However, he won Pennsylvania and New York, where Clay lost votes to the antislavery Liberty Party candidate James G. Birney, who got more votes in New York than Polk's margin of victory. Had Clay won New York, he would have been elected president.[110]

Presidency (1845–1849)[edit]
Main article: Presidency of James K. Polk
The White House 1846
James and Sarah Polk on the portico of the White House alongside Secretary of State James Buchanan, and former first lady Dolley Madison.
With a slender victory in the popular vote, but with a greater victory in the Electoral College (170–105), Polk proceeded to implement his campaign promises. He presided over a country whose population had doubled every twenty years since the American Revolution and which had reached demographic parity with Great Britain.