Presidential candidates have always understood that in a close election, any big news story in the last weeks of a campaign could be enough to tip the contest in November. Now known as an “October surprise,” the news story might take the form of a scandalous revelation about a candidate, the outbreak of war or economic turmoil, or even a fake story planted by a political enemy.
As early as the 1840 election, New York Democrats in support of President Martin Van Buren waited until mid-October to accuse the Whig party of paying Pennsylvanians to vote in New York, a key swing state. A whig official even admitted to the scheme, but it wasn’t the bombshell scandal Democrats had hoped for. Van Buren still lost New York and the election.
“What the idea of the ‘October surprise’ suggests, above all, is that the proximity to the election is when big news can move the needle,” says David Greenberg, a political historian and journalist at Rutgers University. “The truth is, voters make up their minds based on a mixture of impressions, personalities, partisan loyalties, ideological leanings, as well as news and issues. It's never easy to say precisely that this one thing made the difference.”
Below are seven examples of memorable (or anticipated) “October surprises” in U.S. presidential history.
1. A Forged Letter Almost Becomes Garfield’s ‘Death Warrant’ (1880)
Chinese immigration was a hot-button issue in the 1870s. In just a decade, more than 120,000 Chinese men and boys came to the United States under contract to work the railroads. Western states in particular were anxious about the influx of foreign labor and Democrats called for an immediate moratorium on Chinese immigration.
Republican candidate James Garfield took a more measured position, calling for new negotiations with China and for Congress to consider reasonable limitations on Chinese immigration that, “without violence or injustice, will place upon a sure foundation the peace of our communities and the freedom and dignity of labor.”
But just 12 days before the 1880 election, a letter emerged. Allegedly written by Garfield on House of Representatives stationary, the Republican candidate told a Massachusetts businessman named H.L. Morey that “individuals and companies have the right to buy labor where they can get it cheapest.” In other words, unrestricted Chinese immigration is good for business.
Democrats printed half a million copies of the “Morey letter” and distributed them in tightly contested states like California. They called it Garfield’s “death warrant.”
Republicans were slow to respond, but sent a team of private investigators to track down the letter’s recipient in Massachusetts. There was no H.L. Morey. Garfield declared the letter a forgery and published his handwriting side-by-side with the letter to prove it was a fake.
The forged letter did real damage, though, costing Garfield California. Although Garfield eventually won the election 214 electoral votes to 155, he barely won the popular vote by .02 percentage points.
2. FDR Almost Loses the Black Vote (1940)
The 1936 election signaled a landmark shift for Black voters. Prior to 1936, Black voters were loyal Republicans, the party of Lincoln. But as more African Americans moved out of the South to northern cities, they joined other racial and ethnic minorities fighting for better jobs and working conditions. After the Great Depression struck, Black voters flocked to Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal programs.
FDR carried 71 percent of the Black vote in 1936 and he hoped to do the same in 1940, but public opinion had changed. As America prepared for entry into World War II, Black Americans were appalled that segregation was still the norm in the U.S. military, and that FDR had done nothing about it. Meanwhile, FDR’s Republican opponent, Wendell Wilkie, was a vocal champion of civil rights.
On October 28, a high-profile incident threatened to cost FDR the Black vote for good. The president was campaigning in New York City at an event in Madison Square Garden. As FDR left for the train station, one of his staffers—a short-tempered press aide named Stephen Early—was blocked by two police officers. In a violent outburst, Early kneed one of the cops in the crotch. The officer, James Sloan, was Black.
As Sloan was rushed to the hospital, Early—the descendent of a Confederate general—issued a half-hearted apology. “A policeman appears to have been hurt,” Early told the press. “I did not attack or kick any officer. But since one officer believes I was responsible for hurting him, I wish to apologize… I cannot understand why Republican politicians are attempting to find political significance in this incident.”
Two days before the election, FDR tried to salvage the situation by announcing the creation of the Tuskegee Airmen and promoting Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Jr. to brigadier general, the first Black officer to reach that rank.
FDR ended up winning an unprecedented third term as president and only lost a small percentage of the Black vote.
3. Reagan Campaign Coins the Term ‘October Surprise’ (1980)
Interestingly, the term “October surprise” was coined during an election where there wasn’t an actual October surprise.
In 1980, the Iranian Hostage Crisis cast a shadow over the presidential election. More than 50 American citizens were held hostage at the American Embassy in Tehran with no political solution in sight. Election Day would mark a full year of their captivity.
Ronald Reagan campaigned on a promise to free the hostages, something that President Jimmy Carter’s administration had failed to do. But inside the Reagan campaign, there was mounting suspicion that Carter had actually secured the hostages’ release, but was waiting to announce it during the final weeks of the campaign.
It was William Casey, Reagan’s campaign manager, who dubbed Carter’s alleged scheme an “October surprise.”
Time magazine reported, “[Reagan’s campaign] expects [Carter] to pull what they call ‘the October surprise,’ meaning that shortly before Election Day, he will inflate the importance of some overseas event in an attempt to rally the country around him.”
That didn’t happen, of course. Election Day came and went, the hostages remained in Tehran and Reagan won handily. The real surprise came on January 20, when Iran released the hostages just hours after Reagan's inauguration. Democrats then accused Reagan of striking a secret deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after he took office.
4. Kissinger Prematurely Announces ‘Peace’ in Vietnam (1972)
The Vietnam War was the major political issue of both the 1968 and 1972 elections. Even though the term “October surprise” hadn’t been coined yet, the idea was very much a political phenomenon. In both 1968 and 1972, incumbent presidents tried to secure last-minute peace deals to swing the election in their favor.
In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson chose not to run for reelection, but he was committed to helping his Democratic vice president, Hubert Humphrey, defeat the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon. On October 31, 1968, LBJ ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing campaigns in Vietnam, announcing “a major step toward a firm and an honorable peace in Southeast Asia.”
But just days later, the peace talks in Vietnam fell apart and Humphrey lost to Nixon. Democrats alleged that Nixon secretly scuttled the talks by promising the South Vietnamese stronger support if he were elected president. (Casey, who later coined “October surprise,” was a Nixon aide in 1968.)
Four years later, the Vietnam War was still raging and Nixon was adamant about securing peace before Election Day 1972. In early October, there appeared to be a breakthrough in the peace talks with the North Vietnamese accepting America’s terms for an end to the conflict. Behind the scenes, though, the South Vietnamese strongly objected to the arrangement.
That didn’t stop Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security advisor, from attending a press conference on October 26 and proclaiming that “peace is at hand.” In reality, the war would continue for another three years.
“It was big news,” says Greenberg. “Today we would definitely call it an ‘October surprise,’ even though they weren't using that phrase back then.”
Nixon was already heavily favored to win in 1972, but Kissinger’s premature “peace” announcement may have contributed to his landslide victory.
5. Iran-Contra Indictment is Bad News for George H.W. Bush (1992)
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush was fighting to hold onto the White House, but he faced some serious challenges. For starters, the U.S. economy was mired in a recession, never a good place for the incumbent. On top of that, the 1992 race saw the first serious third-party challenge in decades. Billionaire Ross Perot was running as a fiscal conservative and siphoning Republican voters away from Bush.
If Bush had hopes of defeating his Democratic challenger, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, they took a serious hit in June 1992. That’s when Caspar Weinberger, who served as Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, was indicted for his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair.
What’s the connection with Bush? Bush was Reagan’s vice president and had been trying to distance himself from the scandal, in which Reagan allegedly authorized illegal weapons sales to Iran in order to funnel money to the Contras, an anti-socialist army in Nicaragua.
Weinberger was the biggest name to be charged in the case, giving credence to the idea that everyone in the Reagan administration knew about the crime, including Bush. While Weinberger’s indictment didn’t happen in October, the timing was still bad for Bush, who lost the election to Clinton.
Greenberg says that the bad economy and the failure of Reaganomics were the biggest factor in Bush’s loss, but admits that “you never quite know what goes on in the mind of individual voters as they make their decisions close to Election Day.”
Bush pardoned Weinberger before he left office.
6. A DUI Almost Derails George W. Bush (2000)
In the weeks leading up to the 2000 presidential election, polls showed that the race was a dead heat between George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore. That’s exactly the type of election that could be decided by an “October surprise.”
Just days before Election Day‚ Fox News broke a bombshell story. In 1976, George W. Bush was arrested for drunk driving in Maine after a long night of partying. The revelation seemed to confirm unflattering portrayals of the younger Bush as unfit for office.
“I'm not proud of that,” Bush told the press in a statement. “I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much, and I did that night. I learned my lesson.”
The news story was a last-minute gift to Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000, but famously lost the election after a recount in Florida was halted by the Supreme Court.
Republican strategist Karl Rove argued that Bush’s “October surprise” cost him five states in the 2000 election, enough to have avoided the Florida recount altogether.
7. FBI Reopens Probe into Clinton’s Emails (2016)
The 2016 election was chock-full of wild “October surprises.” On October 7, the Washington Post released a 2005 video of Republican candidate Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. That same day, Wikileaks released transcripts of Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street donors, which painted the Democratic candidate as pro-corporate. Then The New York Times reported that Trump hadn’t paid federal taxes in 18 years.
But all of those bombshell news items paled in comparison to what happened on October 28, just 11 days before the election. James Comey, the FBI director, called a press conference to announce that the intelligence agency was reopening its investigation into Clinton’s private email server—an investigation that the FBI had officially closed in July.
The resurrection of the email investigation—which had been the target of Republican ire for a year—delivered a crippling blow to the Clinton campaign. (In her memoir, Clinton said that Comey had “shivved” her.) Clinton lost the election by a narrow margin, despite winning the popular vote.
“There's been a lot of political science research about what they call ‘recency.’ That is to say, a big scandal in July probably is not going to matter that much, at least to most people, unless it completely derails a candidate," says Greenberg. "But the same scandal a week or two before the election, it sticks.”
