Often referred to as the first “dark horse” President, James K. Polk was the last of the Jacksonians to sit in the White House, and the last strong President until the Civil War.

The First “Dark Horse” Presidential Candidate. Henry Clay ran against Polk for president and lost. James Polk went to the 1844 Democratic Convention supporting the presidential front-runner Van Buren. Polk wanted to be the vice president but became the presidential nominee by accident.

In horse racing, a “dark horse” is a horse that wins a race when no one expects it to. As the surprise Democratic nominee, Polk was first “dark horse” candidate for the presidency. News of his nomination was spread to Washington by the first Morse telegraph line, which was only a few days old at the time.

A dark horse is a previously less 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.

The terms horse race and handicapping the horse race, have been used to describe media coverage of elections. The terms refer to any news story or article whose main focus is describing how a particular candidate or candidates is faring during the election, in other words, trying to predict the outcome.

Results of the 1844 election

An underdog in a sporting competition is a competitor that nobody thinks will win. A dark horse in sports is an unknown team, or a team with unknown strengths that goes on to surprise people by winning or doing better than everyone expected.

If you describe someone as a dark horse, you mean that people know very little about them, although they may have recently had success or may be about to have success.

The margin of error is a statistic expressing the amount of random sampling error in the results of a survey. The larger the margin of error, the less confidence one should have that a poll result would reflect the result of a survey of the entire population.

Voters’ decisions are rational if their voting behavior is based on (a) voters’ intention (intention-behavior consistency), and if their intention is based on (b) voters’ evaluations of the performance or capabilities of the candidate (candidate evaluation).

George M. Dallas1845–1849
James Knox Polk/Vice presidents

Sarah Childress Polkm. 1824–1849
James Knox Polk/Wife