The Election of 1800 Lyrics – Hamilton

Song Overview

Personal Review

The Election of 1800 lyrics fire-up Act II like a caffeinated town-hall. I can still picture the opening-night press row: notebooks down, shoulders bobbing as Daveed Diggs swagger-rhymed “John Adams shat the bed.” The song bends civics into a lyrical boxing match—Jefferson ducks, Burr feints, Madison wheezes in the corner—while a shuffle beat keeps ballots rattling like dice. Fifty years on the music beat, and I swear the groove still makes my pulse syncopate.

Snapshot? It’s a four-minute campaign ad that slashes through grief-soaked hush (It’s Quiet Uptown) and drags the audience back to bare-knuckle democracy.

Song Meaning and Annotations

The scene: Washington City still under scaffolding, the Federalist party coughing up credibility, and two Democratic-Republicans—Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr—tied at 73 electoral votes. Miranda turns the constitutional crisis into a rap-cabaret where voters chant “Jefferson or Burr?” like a call-and-response hook.

Genre & rhythm. The track leans on a 96 BPM boom-bap backbone with clav-spiked funk guitar. Percussionist Benny Reiner mutes his snare, making every bar feel like a sealed envelope being thumped on a desk.

Emotional arc. Beginning with Jefferson’s cocky “Can we get back to politics?”, the verse morphs into Burr’s desperate door-to-door hustle, then flips on Hamilton’s surprise endorsement. The music modulates from G-minor to B-flat major in the final chorus—sonic confetti for Jefferson’s “landslide.”

Historical touchpoints. In truth, Hamilton never cast a formal tie-breaking vote; Representative James Bayard nudged Delaware’s delegation after Hamilton lobbied behind the scenes. Miranda telescopes that back-room intrigue into one mic-drop line—“Jefferson has beliefs. Burr has none.”

“Talk less, smile more… It’s eighteen hundred, ladies, tell your husbands: vote for Burr!”

Symbolic language. Jefferson calls Burr a “less extreme you,” weaponising mirror imagery; Burr responds by parroting Hamilton’s own ambition (“I learned that from you”), flipping mentor into rival.

Production twists. Alex Lacamoire drops the bass out under Hamilton’s decisive stanza—space enough for the lyric to land like a gavel. A low brass swell underscores “landslide,” foreshadowing Act II’s impending duel.

Verse Highlights

Jefferson’s Opening Jab

Rhymes “traction” with “faction,” slyly echoing Newton’s law (“equal, opposite reaction”) to frame politics as physics.

Voter Gossip Chorus

Miranda packs 19 voices into eight bars: a sonic Twitter thread steeped in 19^th-century mud-slinging—“He’s so elitist!” “I like that Aaron Burr!”

Hamilton’s Endorsement

The beat cuts, and Leslie Odom Jr.’s ensemble whispers “Oh!” after each line—crowd-reaction sampling that rivals any modern battle-rap stage.

Detailed Annotations

The Election of 1800 in Hamilton: An American Musical drops us into the rough-and-tumble climax of the early republic. The song whips between grief and opportunism, physics and politics, whispered strategy and shouted shock. Lin-Manuel Miranda scores it like a prize fight: Jefferson and Madison jabber, Burr dances, Hamilton lurks in the corner, and the nation waits for a verdict that will rewrite its Constitution. Below, the original Genius annotations are re-voiced, woven into a single narrative that keeps their substance yet lets them breathe like live theater.

Overview

The timeline cheats for drama: Philip Hamilton actually died in November 1801, not before the election. Yet the musical telescopes his loss to intensify the tension, so when Madison staggers onstage blotting tears, the audience feels how private sorrow bleeds into public power.

Jefferson’s opening plea—

Can we get back to politics?

Please?

Musical Techniques

• Motifs recycled, meanings reversed. Jefferson’s taunt

  Yo. Ev’ry action has an equal, opposite reaction.

  echoes Newton and foreshadows Burr’s rise while cheekily noting that Jefferson has swerved from grief to physics before even returning to policy. He quoted the same law in “Washington on Your Side,” but here the energy flips. Later, the crowd’s chant

  Jefferson or Burr?

  scans to the same rhythm as Non-Stop’s cocky

  Treasury or State?

  , turning Hamilton’s former swagger into a bitter echo.
• Melodic callbacks. The soft refrain

  It’s quiet uptown.

  drifts in twice, isolating Hamilton in his mourning bubble until the ensemble cuts him off mid-word, musically yanking him back into the fray. Burr’s manic riff on

  Talk less! Smile more!

  arrives in a new pop-punk coat, his voice cracking as ambition strains his composure. And whenever characters gasp

  Oh!

  , Miranda lifts the instrumental figure from “Washington on Your Side,” but now Hamilton commandeers it to endorse his old rival.
• Hidden Easter eggs. Each punchy

  Burr!

  may wink at the cut song “Let It Go,” and the show-wide “Yo” motif signals a decisive turn—Hamilton is about to break the tie.

Character Dynamics

Jefferson & Madison. Their opening banter telegraphs political theater: Adams, they claim,

shat the bed.

He’s in traction.

It might be nice … to get Hamilton on your side.

Burr the chameleon. To Jefferson’s horror he’s

very attractive in the North.

It’s eighteen hundred, ladies, tell your husbands: vote for Burr!

Don’t let ’em know what you’re against or what you’re for!

Jefferson has beliefs. Burr has none.

Hamilton the reluctant kingmaker. While Jefferson mocks Burr’s evasions—

at least they know I know where France is!

Dear Mr. Hamilton: your fellow Fed’ralists would like to know how you’ll be voting.

It’s quiet uptown.

Is there anything you wouldn’t do?

Yo

Jefferson has my vote.

Thematic Elements

• Action versus inaction. Newton’s Third Law frames the song: Hamilton’s retreat triggers Burr’s surge. Yet Burr’s movement lacks direction—the equal and opposite reaction without mass. Jefferson, for all his flaws, embodies ideology; Burr incarnates vacancy.
• Public masks and private cost. Burr’s voice cracks from nonstop smiling; Hamilton’s grief leaks into politics; Madison’s tears stain his handkerchief. The number dramatizes how personal stress seldom pauses for public duty.
• Power of endorsement. Madison cites the necessity of a “key endorsement.” Hamilton’s single sentence topples Burr’s momentum and, by extension, prompts the Twelfth Amendment that will forever separate presidential and vice-presidential ballots.

Historical References

Adams’s downfall. The Alien and Sedition Acts plus a controversial direct tax made the incumbent deeply unpopular. Even fellow Federalists fumed when he sought peace with France rather than formal war.

New York’s swing status. Twelve electoral votes could decide the nation. Burr’s résumé—state assemblyman, attorney general, senator—made him a credible magnet for New Yorkers resentful of Virginian elites.

Burr the campaign pioneer. Openly canvassing was “new.” He mapped every NYC voter, organized door-knockers, and invented an early get-out-the-vote machine. No wonder Hamilton gapes:

You’re openly campaigning? Sure! That’s new.

Tie and constitutional crisis. The Electoral College produced 73 votes apiece for Jefferson and Burr, 65 for Adams, 64 for Pinckney, and 1 for John Jay. Thirty-five ballots in the House deadlocked. Hamilton lobbied Delaware’s James Bayard—whom he called Burr’s “most unfit” critic—to abstain; the 36th ballot delivered 10 states to Jefferson, 4 to Burr, 2 blank. The fiasco birthed the Twelfth Amendment in 1804.

Friendship ruptures. Jefferson’s smear artist James Callender helped him win but shattered his bond with Adams, initiating a twelve-year silence until their famed 1812 letter exchange. Legend claims Adams’s dying words—“Jefferson still survives.”

Women’s political presence. The ensemble labels “Female Voter,” yet in 1800 most women lacked the franchise except some property-owning New Jerseyans. They still influenced politics through salons, boycotts, and, as Burr courts, social persuasion.

Rhetoric of relatability. Voters in the song weigh which candidate they’d “grab a beer with,” foreshadowing modern polling tropes. Jefferson’s opponents brand him

so elitist!

Aftermath. Burr, forced into the vice-presidency, found Jefferson freezing him out of cabinet meetings. Chernow notes Burr joked that he “now and then met the ministers in the street.” Jefferson’s final jab—

Hey, Burr, when you see Hamilton, thank him for the endorsement.

Thus the number races from whispered strategy to constitutional overhaul, from Newtonian law to political lawmaking, all delivered through refrains that flicker between past songs like lantern light on a spinning stage. The curtain falls with Jefferson’s smug grin and Burr’s silent fury, setting the fuse for the duel that history—and the next track—will ignite.

Song Credits

• Featured Vocals: Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, Leslie Odom Jr., Lin-Manuel Miranda, Original Broadway Cast
• Producer: Bill Sherman, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, Alex Lacamoire, Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Composer/Lyricist: Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Release Date: September 25, 2015
• Genre: Political Rap / Show Tune / Funk-Hop
• Instruments: violin, viola, cello, harp, banjo, guitar, synth, percussion, drums, bass, keyboards
• Label: Atlantic Records
• Mood: Swaggering civic showdown
• Length: 3 min 57 sec
• Track #: 42 on Hamilton: An American Musical (Original Broadway Cast Recording)
• Language: English
• Poetic meter: Rapid internal rhyme, alternating trochaic/iambic stress
• Copyright © 2015 Atlantic Recording Corporation / 5000 Broadway Music

Songs Exploring Themes of Politics & Principle

“Cabinet Battle #1” – Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton
Earlier in Act II, Jefferson and Hamilton spar over national debt. The flow is faster, the stakes economic, yet both tracks dramatize policy as performance art. While Cabinet Battle #1 riffs on Public Enemy’s verbal crossfire, The Election of 1800 shifts to grassroots campaigning.

“Alexander Hamilton” – Opening number
The prologue frames Hamilton as an immigrant outsider; forty songs later, his outsider lens decides a presidency. Both songs share call-and-response hooks and a chorus-style Greek-chorus narration.

“One Day More” – Les Misérables
Another ensemble show-stopper where multiple political viewpoints collide. Both tracks stack character leitmotifs like deck chairs; but One Day More swells to operatic rebellion, whereas The Election of 1800 finishes with a dry chuckle—Jefferson’s last-minute rules change.

Questions and Answers

Did Hamilton actually break the 1800 tie?

No. He lobbied Federalist delegates, but Representative James Bayard switched Delaware’s ballot, securing Jefferson’s win.

Is the lyric “Hamilton’s on your side” historically accurate?

Partly. Hamilton published letters against Burr and for Jefferson, but there was no public stage endorsement.

Has the track earned RIAA certification?

Yes—Gold, one of twenty-two Hamilton tracks to reach at least Gold status by June 2023.

Are there notable cover versions?

Indie rapper Baz Jaeger released a 2023 cover; college a-cappella groups frequently mash it with Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.”

How popular is the song on streaming platforms?

Over 99 million Spotify plays as of July 2025, averaging 52 K daily streams.

Awards and Chart Positions

How to Sing?

Jefferson’s flow hovers around G₂–B₃, spitting sixteenth-note triplets—practice with a metronome at 96 BPM, then loosen syllables on the off-beat. Burr sits mid-tenor (A₂–E₄) and demands legato charm; think velvet over steel. Hamilton (baritenor) tops at F₄, but the key challenge is breath control—each rhetorical phrase feels like a debate podium swallowed whole.

Fan and Media Reactions

“The beat drops and suddenly we’re in The West Wing with rhymes.” – @kermitmafrog on TikTok

“I use the ‘Jefferson or Burr?’ chant to teach electoral college math—students eat it up.” – history teacher on #ElectionOf1800 TikTok

“WatchMojo ranking got it right: this is the sleeper banger of the score.” – YouTube comment

“Trying to walk to work without rapping ‘John Adams shat the bed’ is impossible.” – u/FoundersFan88

“Hamilton made me think politics could rhyme—dangerous thought, but catchy as hell.” – @musicalreactions