U.S. Elections Through the Years

Political hopefuls burn bright, then fade. Parties and poll numbers rise and fall. Presidents pass the torch, power changes hands.

Through it all, one constant remains: The Associated Press’ coverage of American politics, with a special emphasis on elections at the state and national level.

Since the election of Zachary Taylor as the 12^th U.S. president in 1848, AP has been a trusted source of election coverage. This year, as it does every Election Day, AP will report results from towns, cities and every county in the U.S. The news cooperative is widely considered the gold standard for election night results.

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Workers are shown in the offices of the Associated Press on Election night, Nov. 8, 1932, in New York. (AP Photo)

Workers are shown in the offices of the Associated Press on Election night, Nov. 8, 1932, in New York. (AP Photo)

Since AP launched its WirePhoto service in 1935, the news cooperative has been no less committed to photographic coverage of the electoral process. Staff photographers, freelancers and member newspapers provide a steady stream of images from the primaries through the general election. The mandate for AP political coverage — words or pictures — has remained the same since Polk’s day: be accurate, be fair and be fast. And for tireless photographers, who can rarely recover a missed shot, it means always keeping a camera on the candidate.

But AP photojournalists in the midst of a grinding political campaign will look for images beyond the staged photo op, often producing revealing and unconventional images. For that approach AP photographers covering the 1992 presidential campaign received the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.

Below is a selection of images from the Associated Press’ coverage of American politics.

In this Nov. 4, 1948, photo, President Harry S. Truman holds up an election day edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, which, based on early results, mistakenly announced "Dewey Defeats Truman." "If Congress does something, then I can't run against a do-nothing Congress," President Barack Obama said Oct. 6, 2011, at a White House news conference. "If Congress does nothing, then it's not a matter of me running against them. I think the American people will run them out of town." Obama's message is straight out of the playbook of Truman, who overcame a midterm drubbing by Republicans and assailed a "do-nothing" Congress from the back of a campaign train to win another term in 1948. The comeback was epitomized by a jubilant Truman hoisting a copy of the paper. (AP Photo/Byron Rollins)

Sen. John F. Kennedy makes his way through a crowd of supporters and journalists as he arrives in Los Angeles, July 9, 1960 for the Democratic National Convention. (AP Photo)

Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt is greeted by Georgia farmers while en route to Warm Springs, Ga., Oct. 24, 1932. (AP Photo)

Republican presidential nominee Texas Gov. George W. Bush is illuminated by a shaft of sunlight from a skylight during a campaign event at the National Steinbeck Center, Thursday, Aug. 10, 2000, in Salinas, Calif. GOP officials insist they can win California by appealing to minority voters, particularly Latinos, a growing segment of the Central Valley's population. Democrats say voters will see through the rhetoric. (AP Photo/Eric Draper)

Dr. Anna Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the League of Women Voters, lead an estimated 20,000 supporters in a women's suffrage march on New York's Fifth Ave. in 1915 . (AP Photo)

Vice President Richard Nixon demonstration and demonstrators outside Blackstone Hotel, Chicago in July 1960. (AP Photo)

W. R. Owens, right, election official tells two African Americans who tried in vain to vote in Atlanta's city Democratic white primary on Sept. 5, 1945, that the primary is for white persons only and points to the top of the ballot which so states. They are Lewis K. McGuire, left, World War II veteran, and S. M. Lewis, a physician. Beside them stands policeman Roy Wall. (AP Photo/McD)

Broward County canvassing board member Judge Robert Rosenberg uses a magnifying glass to examine a disputed ballot Friday, Nov. 24, 2000, at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

Democratic presidential hopeful Bill Clinton addresses the media as U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy, D-Mass., looks on at a Boston campaign stop the evening of April 28, 1992. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)

Theodore Roosevelt campaigns for the Presidency in 1904. (AP Photo)

Howard Nizebeth, 48, watches election results in Times Square, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012, in New York. After a year of campaigning, polls have begun to close after Americans across the United States headed to the polls to decide the winner of the tight presidential race between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. (AP Photo/ John Minchillo)

Delegates to the Republican National Convention in Chicago listen to a speech by former U.S. President Herbert Hoover July 8, 1952. (AP Photo/William Smith)

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., sheds tears as he talks about his grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, at a rally in Charlotte, N.C., Monday, Nov. 3, 2008. Obama's grandmother, who helped raise him, died peaceably in her sleep Obama announced Monday, one day before the presidential election. She was 86. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Dwight D. Eisenhower laughs as his wife, Mamie, tries on a cardboard eyeshade during a Republican campaign dinner in Washington, April 17, 1956. Eisenhower was preparing to run for his second term in office. (AP Photo/Bob Schutz)

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., talk on the phone with a girlfriend of a member of the traveling press as she passed out Valentine's day chocolates aboard her campaign plane as it sat on the tarmac at the Youngstown Airport in Vienna, Ohio, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

William House of Huntsville, Ala., waits for Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to arrive during a campaign stop at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Tuesday, March 6, 2012, in Huntsville, Ala. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Some of the thousands of persons who packed Times Square in New York, Nov. 5, 1940, in the excitement of the presidential election. Observers believed it was the largest crowd ever to gather in the square. Election results were flashed from the tower of the Times building. Bulletins, as received were also displayed on the electric sign around the building and on a bulletin board at the north end of the building. (AP Photo)

In this Sept. 9, 2012 photo, Vice President Joe Biden talks to customers, including a woman who pulled up her chair in front of the bench Biden was sitting on, during a stop at Cruisers Diner in Seaman, Ohio. Let's be clear: the biker chick in the bandana and leather vest is NOT sitting in Biden's lap. But it sure looks like it. The vice president plunked himself down with some bikers in a diner in Seaman, Ohio, this fall, and leaned in close behind one woman, grabbing on to her shoulders as they posed for photos. That's Joe. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, brought his campaign to Daytona Beach, Florida on Saturday, Feb. 7, 1976, and made a point a she answered a question by a newsman before he spoke at the Florida Jaycees Winter Conference on Saturday. (AP Photo)

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama spar during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, in Hempstead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

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