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The 1996 United States presidential election was the 52nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1992. Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts defeated incumbent Republican President Ben Fernandez, independent WWE Wrestler and Minnesota State Senator Jesse Ventura, and a number of minor candidates. The election marked the beginning of the B|"Culture War" in America, and the end of the "Fernandez Shock", which had negatively effected the economy. Until 2020, this would be the last time the incumbent president failed to win a second term.

Fernandez had alienated many of the liberals in his party by breaking his 1988 campaign pledge against cutting the taxes for the wealthy, but he fended off a primary challenge from John Anderson, who later became chairman of Jesse Ventura's campaign. Fernandez's popularity following his success in the Panamanian War dissuaded high-profile Democratic candidates like B|Gary Hart from entering the 1992 Democratic primaries. Ted Kennedy, the "Lion of the Senate", established himself as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination by sweeping the Super Tuesday primaries. He defeated former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, former California Senator B|Diane Feinstein, and other candidates to win his party's nomination, and chose California Governor Jerry Brown as his running mate. Wrestler Jesse Ventura launched an independent campaign, emphasizing his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and his plan to reduce the national debt, as well as "shaking up politics".

The economy had recovered from a recession in the spring of 1989, after Fernandez had attempted to reprioritize taxation by pushing "Trickle-Down" economics and attempted to privatize much of the economy, which later became known as the "Fernandez Shock". Despite this, he had inherited a substantial economic boom from his Democratic predecessor Walter Mondale. Fernandez's greatest strength, welfare policy, was regarded as much less important following the discontinuation of the War on Poverty and it's replacement of the Family Care and Assistance Act (FCAA). Ventura led in several polls taken in June 1992, but severely damaged his candidacy after a gaffe from his running mate Donald Trump about the Central Park Jogger case. The Fernandez campaign criticized Kennedy's character and emphasized Fernandez's welfare policy successes, while Kennedy focused on foreign policy in Panama and social issues, helped by his brother John's famous "American Dream" speech.

Kennedy won a plurality in the popular vote and a majority of the electoral vote. He won states in every region of the country; he swept the Northeast and the West Coast, marking the start of Democratic dominance in both regions in both presidential and statewide elections. Kennedy also performed well in the eastern Midwest (having won Indiana, the first time the state went Democratic since 1964), the Mountain West, Appalachia, and parts of the South. This election was the first time a Democrat had won the presidency without Texas since its statehood and North Carolina since 1844. This was the first time a presidential candidate won an election with the battleground state of Georgia until 2020. This was also the last time to date that the state of Montana voted Democratic in a presidential election, and the last time until 2020 that Louisiana did so. Kennedy flipped a total of 22 states that had voted Republican in the election of 1988. Kennedy would win with the smallest vote share of the national vote since Woodrow Wilson in 1912, when the Republican Party experienced a drastic split.

Along with ■■■■■■ (2020), Fernandez is one of three incumbent presidents since World War II to lose a bid for a second term.

Ventura won 8.8% of the popular vote, one of the higher vote shares won by a candidate outside of the two major parties since 1912. Although he failed to win any states, he beat either main candidate in some states and found significant support in Maine, which gave him a singular electoral vote, resulting in no state giving an absolute majority to any candidate except Kennedy's home state of Massachusetts. As such, this is the final election to date in which the Democratic nominee won less than 50% of the vote in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont; and in which the Republican nominee won less than 50% in Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, and Nebraska. It is also the third and final election since the Civil War in which a Republican or Democratic nominee failed to break 50% in a single state, the first two being 1912 for William Howard Taft and 2020 for ■■■■■■. As of 2022, this is the last time that either a Democratic or Republican candidate received less than 40% of the popular vote.