Dark horse A dark horse is a previously less known person or thing that emerges to prominence in a situation, especially in a competition involving multiple rivals, or a contestant that on paper should be unlikely to succeed but yet still might.Origin The term began as horse racing parlance for a race horse that is unknown to gamblers and thus difficult to place betting odds on. The first known mention of the concept is in Benjamin Disraeli's novel The Young Duke . Disraeli's protagonist, the Duke of St. James, attends a horse race with a surprise finish: "A dark horse which had never been thought of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph."Politics The concept has been used in political contexts in such countries as Iran , Philippines , Russia , Egypt , Finland , Canada , the United Kingdom and the United States . Politically, the concept came to the United States in the nineteenth century when it was first applied to James K. Polk, a relatively unknown Tennessee politician who won the Democratic Party's 1844 presidential nomination over a host of better-known candidates. Polk won the nomination on the ninth ballot at his party's national nominating convention , and went on to become the country's eleventh president . Other successful dark horse candidates for the United States presidency include: Franklin Pierce , chosen as the Democratic nominee and later elected the fourteenth president in 1852. Abraham Lincoln , chosen as the Republican nominee and elected as the sixteenth president in 1860. Rutherford B. Hayes, elected the nineteenth president in 1876. James A. Garfield, elected the twentieth president in 1880. Warren G. Harding, Senator from Ohio , elected the twenty-ninth president in 1920 after his surprise nomination. Jimmy Carter , former Governor of Georgia elected the thirty-ninth president in 1976; in the beginning of that same year, Carter was relatively unknown outside his home state of Georgia but went on to win the nomination over rivals with more national prominence. Barack Obama, the Junior Senator from Illinois who was little known outside of his constituency when he announced his candidacy in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries but emerged from obscurity to narrowly edge out the heavily favored Hillary Clinton for the nomination. Obama would be elected president , becoming the nation's first African-American president. Donald Trump, a real estate investor and reality television personality, defeated 15 established rivals for the Republican nomination before defeating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the general election . Trump had never held political office prior to his presidency , but had been running or espousing to run for President since 1999. Perhaps the two most famous unsuccessful dark horse presidential candidates in American history are Democrat William Jennings Bryan , a three-term congressman from Nebraska nominated on the fifth ballot after impressing the 1896 Democratic National Convention with his famous Cross of Gold speech , and Republican businessman Wendell Willkie , who was nominated on the sixth ballot at the 1940 Republican National Convention despite never having previously held government office and having only joined the party in 1939. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders is another classic example of a dark horse candidate, whose grassroots campaign in the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries came much closer than initially expected to toppling front-runner Hillary Clinton and her machine. Outside of the United States, the dark horse status also attributed to Alberto Fujimori , who rose to the Presidency in Peru . In Nigeria , Goodluck Jonathan can be referred as a dark horse, as he was the first president from the historically marginalized Niger Delta region, and he also rose through three political offices through unusual circumstances. In Finland, Lauri Kristian Relander was elected President as a dark horse in 1925, his party naming him as its candidate only after the people had voted for presidential electors. A dark horse presidency in Finland remained possible, and sometimes speculated upon, until the electoral system was changed to a direct personal vote in 1987. Several government ministers, who were appointed to the third cabinet of Russian prime minister Dimitri Medvedev on 21 May 2012 , were also described as "dark horses" for lacking experience, such as Olga Golodets , Vladimir Medinsky and Alexander Novak . Some of the candidates for the presidency of Iran in 2013 were labelled as dark horse, including Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf , Mohsen Rezai , Mostafa Pourmohammadi , Mohammad Saeedikia and Mohammad Gharazi . In the United Kingdom , Jeremy Corbyn , who won the 2015 Labour Party leadership election despite struggling to secure enough nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party to stand as a candidate, has also been described as a dark horse.Use in music, television, and film In addition, surprising or unlikely nominations for such prizes as the Academy Award are referred to as dark horses. Guitarist and singer-songwriter George Harrison was nicknamed the "dark horse" of The Beatles , as his visibility as a songwriter and vocalist increased later in the Beatles' career, particularly on Abbey Road . Harrison went on to name his solo label Dark Horse Records and release both an album and a song titled "Dark Horse." Switchfoot's song "Dark Horses" was inspired by an organization called StandUp for Kids , which aids homeless and street children across America. The 24th chapter of Mark Helprin's novel Winter's Tale is called 'White Horse and Dark Horse,' referring to the character of Praeger de Pinto as an outlier candidate for the Mayor of New York City .
Popular articles Javier Milei - Argentine libertarian economist, author, radio conductor and public speaker sympathetic to the Austrian School of economic thought. He became widely known for his regular ...Jimmy Carter - American politician, philanthropist, and former farmer who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previ...UEFA Euro 2024 - The 2024 UEFA European Football Championship , commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2024 or simply Euro 2024 , will be the 17th edition of the UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial internationa...Argentina - country located mostly in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, the country is also b...Sam Altman - American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. He is the former president of Y Combinator and now the CEO of OpenAI. Early life and education. ...Rosalynn Carter - American who served as First Lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981 as the wife of President Jimmy Carter. For decades, she has been a leading advocate for numerou...Next Argentine presidential election - Next Argentine presidential election - presidential election in Argentina....Popular movies The Hunger Games (film) - 2012 American dystopian action thriller science fiction-adventure film directed by Gary Ross and based on Suzanne Collins’s 2008 novel of the same name. It is the first insta...untitled Captain Marvel sequel - part of Marvel Cinematic Universe....Killers of the Flower Moon (film project) - Killers of the Flower Moon - film project in United States of America. It was presented as drama, detective fiction, thriller. The film project starred Leonardo Dicaprio, Robert De Niro. Director of...Five Nights at Freddy's (film) - Five Nights at Freddy's - film published in 2017 in United States of America. Scenarist of the film - Scott Cawthon....Popular video games Minecraft - sandbox video game developed by Mojang Studios. Created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language and released as a public alpha for personal computers in 2...Grand Theft Auto V - 2013 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the first main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series since 2008's Grand Theft ...Roblox - online game platform and game creation system that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. Founded by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released in...Baldur's Gate III - upcoming role-playing video game developed and published by Larian Studios for Microsoft Windows and the Stadia streaming service. It is the third main game in the Baldur's ...Alan Wake - action-adventure video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios, released for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The story follows best-selling thri...Fortnite - online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in three distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: ...Super Mario RPG - is a role-playing video game developed by Square and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1996. It was directed by Yoshihiko Maekawa and Chihiro Fujioka and produced by...Popular books Book of Revelation - The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament, and consequently is also the final book of the Christian Bible. Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: apok...Book of Genesis - account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, Israel's ancestors and the origins...Gospel of Matthew - The Gospel According to Matthew is the first book of the New Testament and one of the three synoptic gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, rejected and executed in Israel, pronounces judgement on ...Michelin Guide - Michelin Guides are a series of guide books published by the French tyre company Michelin for more than a century. The term normally refers to the annually published Michelin Red Guide , the oldest...Psalms - The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms , the Psalter or "the Psalms", is the first book of the Ketuvim , the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and thus a book of th...Ecclesiastes - Ecclesiastes is one of 24 books of the Tanakh , where it is classified as one of the Ketuvim . Originally written c. 450–200 BCE, it is also among the canonical Wisdom literature of the Old Tes...The 48 Laws of Power - non-fiction book by American author Robert Greene. The book...Popular television series The Crown (TV series) - historical drama web television series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, created and principally written by Peter Morgan, and produced by Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Tel...Friends - American sitcom television series, created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast sta...Young Sheldon - spin-off prequel to The Big Bang Theory and begins with the character Sheldon...Modern Family - American television mockumentary family sitcom created by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan for the American Broadcasting Company. It ran for eleven seasons, from September 23...Loki (TV series) - upcoming American web television miniseries created for Disney+ by Michael Waldron, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, shar...Game of Thrones - American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for HBO. It...Shameless (American TV series) - American comedy-drama television series developed by John Wells which debuted on Showtime on January 9, 2011. It...
OWIKI.org . Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.