Which group gained power after the 1876 presidential election?
a. the democrats
b. the carpetbaggers
c. the liberal republicans
d. the moderate republicans

The correct answer is A. After the 1876 presidential election, the Democrats gained political and electoral power in the United States despite losing the election in the Electoral College, because they had won the popular vote and felt that the electionary process was not as clear as it should had been.

The presidential elections of 1876 were the most disputed and intense in the electoral history of the United States of America. Samuel J. Tilden, a New York Democrat, defeated the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, originally from Ohio, in the popular vote. Thus, Tilden would receive 184 electoral votes against 165 of Hayes, but 20 votes were not counted, and were in dispute, and came from the states of Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. Each party declared its voters as winners, but in Ohio a Democratic elector was dismissed from his position for holding a public office. Finally, Hayes assumed the presidency on March 4, 1877.