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1848 United States presidential election

The 1848 United States presidential election was the 16th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1848. In the aftermath of the Mexican–American War, General Zachary Taylor of the Whig Party defeated Senator Lewis Cass of the Democratic Party.

Despite Taylor's unclear political affiliations and beliefs, and the Whig opposition to the Mexican–American War, the 1848 Whig National Convention nominated the popular general over party stalwarts such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. For vice president, the Whigs nominated Millard Fillmore, a New York Whig known for his moderate views on slavery. Incumbent President James K. Polk, a Democrat, honored his promise not to seek re-election, leaving his party's nomination open. The 1848 Democratic National Convention nominated Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan after former President Martin Van Buren withdrew his bid for a second term over a platform dispute. Van Buren broke from his party to lead the ticket of the Free Soil Party, which opposed the extension of slavery into the territories.

The Whig choice of Zachary Taylor was made almost out of desperation; he was not clearly committed to Whig principles, but he was popular for leading the war effort. The Democrats had a record of prosperity and had acquired the Mexican cession and parts of Oregon country. It appeared almost certain that they would win unless the Whigs picked Taylor. Taylor won a plurality of the popular vote and a majority of the electoral vote, while Van Buren won 10.1% of the popular vote, a strong showing for a third party candidate.

Taylor's victory made him the second of two Whigs to win a presidential election, following William Henry Harrison's victory in the 1840 presidential election. Like Harrison, Taylor died during his term, and he was succeeded by Fillmore.

Whig Party nomination

The Whig Party held its national convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with delegates from every state except for Texas although the Texas Whigs had selected to make the Louisiana delegates their proxies. Henry Clay, Winfield Scott, Zachary Taylor, and Daniel Webster sought the presidential nomination and Taylor led on every ballot before winning on the fourth ballot. After Webster turned down the vice presidential candidacy, Millard Fillmore received the party's vice-presidential nomination on the second ballot after defeating Abbott Lawrence, a Massachusetts politician whose mild opposition to slavery led him to be dubbed a "Cotton Whig". An attempt was made to make both nominations unanimous, but it was unsuccessful due to Taylor's support for the Whig Party being seen as dubious.

Democratic Party nomination

The Democratic Party held its national convention in Baltimore, Maryland. There was a credentials dispute over the New York delegation between the Barnburners and Hunkers factions with the Barnburners being anti-slavery. The delegates voted 126 to 125 to seat both delegations and share their control of New York's votes, but the Barnburners left the convention in disagreement with the compromise while the Hunkers refused to vote. The withdrawal of the Barnburners effectively removed former President Martin Van Buren, who had already become unenthusiastic about trying to win the party's nomination after the convention had voted to endorse a platform supporting popular sovereignty, from contention.

As a result of Van Buren's withdrawal, U.S. Senator Lewis Cass and Secretary of State James Buchanan were seen as the only serious contenders for the presidential nomination, with a draft effort also focusing on Supreme Court associate justice Levi Woodbury. In stark contrast to the highly contested and protracted convention at the previous election, Cass held a wide lead on all four ballots, only being denied victory on the third due to the convention rules requiring a two-thirds majority, before the Buchanan and Woodbury campaigns quietly released enough delegates to allow Cass victory on the fourth ballot. William Orlando Butler won the vice-presidential nomination on the second ballot against John A. Quitman.

Free Soil Party nomination

Members of the Whig Party who opposed slavery, New York Barnburners, and members of the Liberty Party met in August 1848 in Buffalo, New York, to found a new political party. The Barnburners made a call for the formation of an anti-slavery party at their conclave in June, and by the People's Convention of Friends of Free Territory, which was organized by Salmon P. Chase, in Columbus, Ohio. The convention was attended by 165 delegates from eight states to form the Free Soil Party.

Van Buren won the party's presidential nomination against John P. Hale on the first ballot with 244 votes against Hale's 181 votes. Hale had been nominated by the Liberty Party in October 1847, but withdrew from the election after the Free Soil Party gave its presidential nomination to Van Buren. Charles F. Adams won the party's vice-presidential nomination.

Van Buren knew that the Free Soilers had not the slightest chance of winning, rather that his candidacy would split the Democratic vote and throw the election to the Whigs. Bitter and aging, Van Buren did not care despite the fact that his life had been built upon the rock of party solidarity and party regularity. He loathed Lewis Cass and the principle of popular sovereignty with equal intensity.

Liberty Party nomination
Despite their significant showing in the prior presidential election, certain events would conspire to remove the Liberty Party from political significance.

Initially, the party's presidential nomination was to be decided in the fall of 1847 at a Convention in Buffalo, New York. There, Senator John P. Hale was nominated for president over Gerrit Smith, brother-in-law to the party's previous presidential nominee James G. Birney. Leicester King, a former judge and state senator in Ohio, was nominated for vice president. Anti-slavery Democrats and Whigs, disappointed with their respective nominees, would form a new movement in conjunction with members of the Liberty Party such as John Hale and Salmon Chase to form the Free Soil Party that summer. At this point, both Hale and King withdrew in favor of a Free Soil ticket led by former President Martin Van Buren, and the great majority of members of the Liberty Party followed them into the new political party.

National Liberty Party nomination
A small faction refused to support Van Buren for the presidency, however. They held another convention in June 1848 as the "National Liberty Party." Gerrit Smith was nominated for president with Charles C. Foote, a Presbyterian minister from Michigan, as his vice presidential running mate.

Other nominations
The Native American Party, a precursor to the Know Nothings, which had split from the Whig Party in 1845, met in September 1847 in Philadelphia, where they nominated Zachary Taylor for president and Henry A. S. Dearborn of Massachusetts for vice president. However, when the Whig Party nominated Taylor for the presidency with Millard Fillmore as his running mate the following year, this rendered his previous nomination moot and the Native American Party failed to make an alternate nomination.

The Industrial Congress held in Philadelphia on June 13, 1848, nominating Gerrit Smith (nominee of the National Liberty Party) for president, and William S. Wait of Illinois for vice president. This meeting, inspired by the National Reform Association, was primarily focused on workers rights. It established a platform that included planks on land limitation, the reduction of public official's salaries, abolition of the standing army, tariff reduction, and a reduced work week.

Campaign
The campaign was fought without much enthusiasm, and practically without an issue. Neither of the two great parties made an effort to rally the people to the defense of any important principle.

Whig campaigners, who included future presidents Abraham Lincoln and Rutherford B. Hayes, talked up Taylor's "antiparty" opposition to the Jacksonian commitment to the spoils system and yellow-dog partisanship. In the South, they stressed that he was a Louisiana slaveholder, while in the North they highlighted his Whiggish willingness to defer to Congress on major issues (which he subsequently did not do).

Democrats repeated, as they had for many years, their opposition to a national bank, high tariffs, and federal subsidies for local improvements. The Free Soilers branded both major parties lackeys of the Slave Power, arguing that the rich planters controlled the agenda of both parties, leaving the ordinary white man out of the picture. They had to work around Van Buren's well-known reputation for compromising with slavery.

The Whigs had the advantage of highlighting Taylor's military glories. With Taylor remaining vague on the issues, the campaign was dominated by personalities and personal attacks, with the Democrats calling Taylor vulgar, uneducated, cruel and greedy, and the Whigs attacking Cass for graft and dishonesty. The division of the Democrats over slavery allowed Taylor to dominate the Northeast.

The Free Soilers were on the ballots in only 17 of the 29 states with the popular vote, making it mathematically possible for Van Buren to win the presidency, but he had no real chance. Still, the party campaigned vigorously, particularly in the traditional Democratic strongholds in the northeast.

While some Free Soilers were hopeful of taking enough states to throw the election into the House of Representatives, Van Buren himself knew this was a long shot and that the best that his party could do was lay the groundwork for a hopefully improved showing in 1852.

Records
This was the first time in the Second Party System in which the victorious party failed to gain at least a plurality of the counties as well as of the popular vote.

This was the last election in which Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island voted for the Whigs. It was also the last time that Georgia voted against the Democrats until 1964, the last time Delaware and Louisiana did so until 1872, and the last time Florida and North Carolina did so until 1868.

Discounting Republican Abraham Lincoln's 1864 re-election on the National Union ticket, Taylor is the most recent individual who was not a member of either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party to win a presidential election. The contest was the first presidential election that took place on the same day in every state, and it was the first time that Election Day was statutorily a Tuesday. It is also the first election in which the two candidates that received electoral votes carried the same number of states and the only time that it happened between Democrat and Whig candidates. This would only happen again twice, in 1880 and 2020.

Results
With Taylor as their candidate, the Whigs won their second and last victory in a presidential election. Taylor won the electoral college by capturing 163 of the 290 electoral votes. Taylor out-polled Cass in the popular vote by 138,000 votes, winning 47% of the popular vote, and was elected president.

A shift of less than 6000 votes to Cass in Georgia and Maryland would have left the electoral college in a 145–145 tie, while a shift of less than 27,000 votes to Van Buren in Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts would have left both Taylor and Cass short of the 146 electoral votes required to win, forcing a contingent election in the House of Representatives.

A study of the county returns reveals that Free Soil strength drawn at the expense of the major parties differed by region. In the East North Central States, it appears at least the majority of the Free Soil strength was drawn from the Whig Party.

Conversely, in the Middle Atlantic region, Free Soil bases of strength lay in the areas which had hitherto been Democratic, particularly in New York and northern Pennsylvania. The Free Soil Democrats nomination of Van Buren made the victory of Taylor nearly certain in New York. On election day, enough Democratic votes were drawn away by Van Buren to give the Whig ticket all but two Democratic counties, thus enabling it to carry hitherto impregnable parts of upper New York state. The Democrats, confronted with an irreparable schism in New York, lost the election.

In New England, the Democratic vote declined by 33,000 from its 1844 level, while the Whig vote likewise declined by 15,000 votes. The third-party vote tripled, and the total vote remained nearly stationary: a partial indication, perhaps, of the derivation of the Free Soil strength in this section. For the first time since the existence of the Whig Party, the Whigs failed to gain an absolute majority of the vote in Massachusetts and Vermont. In addition, the Democrats failed to retain their usual majority in Maine; thus only New Hampshire (Democratic) and Rhode Island (Whig) of the states in this section gave their respective victorious parties clear-cut majorities.

Of the 1,464 counties/independent cities making returns, Cass placed first in 753 (51.43%), Taylor in 676 (46.17%), and Van Buren in 31 (2.12%). Four counties (0.27%) in the West split evenly between Taylor and Cass.

The election has sometimes been described as "a contest without an issue," as both major candidates sought to steer clear of divisive subjects. The historian George Pierce Garrison famously quipped that "practically the only thing it decided was that a Whig general should be made President because he had done effective work in carrying on a Democratic war."

Source (Popular Vote): Source (Electoral Vote): (a) The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote.

States that flipped from Democratic to Whig

 * Georgia
 * Louisiana
 * New York
 * Pennsylvania

States that flipped from Whig to Democratic

 * Ohio

Close states
States where the margin of victory was under 5%:
 * 1)  Alabama 1.12% (691 votes)
 * 2)  Mississippi 1.20% (634 votes)
 * 3)  Virginia 1.60% (1,474 votes)
 * 4)  Illinois 2.49% (3,099 votes)
 * 5)  Georgia 2.98% (2,747 votes)
 * 6)  Indiana 3.16% (4,838 votes)
 * 7)  Wisconsin 3.20% (1,254 votes)
 * 8)  Pennsylvania 3.62% (13,337 votes)  (tipping point state)
 * 9)  New Jersey 4.01% (3,114 votes)
 * 10)  Delaware 4.26% (530 votes)
 * 11)  Maryland 4.38% (3,174 votes)

States where the margin of victory was under 10%:
 * 1)  Ohio 5.00% (16,414 votes)
 * 2)  Tennessee 5.04% (6,179 votes)
 * 3)  Connecticut 5.24% (3,267 votes)
 * 4)  Maine 5.62% (4,922 votes)
 * 5)  Iowa 5.87% (1,308 votes)
 * 6)  Louisiana 9.18% (3,108 votes)

Electoral college selection
* ''Massachusetts law provided that the state legislature would choose the Electors if no slate of Electors could command a majority of voters statewide. In 1848, this provision was triggered, although the legislature ultimately chose the electors of the plurality vote winner, Taylor.''


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1852 United States presidential election

The 1852 United States presidential election was the 17th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1852. Democrat Franklin Pierce defeated Whig nominee General Winfield Scott. A third party candidate from the Free Soil party, John P. Hale, also ran and came in third place, but got no electoral votes.

Incumbent Whig President Millard Fillmore had succeeded to the presidency in 1850 upon the death of President Zachary Taylor. Fillmore endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and enforced the Fugitive Slave Law. This earned Fillmore Southern voter support and Northern voter opposition. On the 53rd ballot of the sectionally divided 1852 Whig National Convention, Scott defeated Fillmore for the nomination. Democrats divided among four major candidates at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. On the 49th ballot, dark horse candidate Franklin Pierce won nomination by consensus compromise. The Free Soil Party, a third party opposed to the extension of slavery in the United States and into the territories, nominated New Hampshire Senator John P. Hale.

With few policy differences between the two major candidates, the election became a personality contest. Though Scott had commanded in the Mexican–American War, Pierce also served. Scott strained Whig Party unity as his anti-slavery reputation gravely damaged his campaign in the South. A group of Southern Whigs and a separate group of Southern Democrats each nominated insurgent tickets, but both efforts failed to attract support.

Pierce and running mate William R. King won a comfortable popular majority, carrying 27 of the 31 states. Pierce won the highest share of the electoral vote since James Monroe's uncontested 1820 re-election. The Free Soil Party regressed to less than five percent of the national popular vote, down from more than ten percent in 1848, while overwhelming defeat and disagreement about slavery soon drove the Whig Party to disintegrate. Anti-slavery Whigs and Free Soilers would ultimately coalesce into the new Republican Party, which would quickly become a formidable movement in the free states.

Not until 1876 would Democrats again win a majority of the popular vote for president, and not until 1932 would they win a majority in both the popular vote and the electoral college.

Democratic Party nomination

 * Franklin Pierce, former U.S. senator from New Hampshire
 * Lewis Cass, U.S. senator from Michigan
 * James Buchanan, former U.S. secretary of state from Pennsylvania
 * William L. Marcy, former U.S. secretary of war from New York
 * Stephen Douglas, U.S. senator from Illinois

The Democratic Party held its national convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in June 1852. Benjamin F. Hallett, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, limited the sizes of the delegations to their electoral votes and a vote to maintain the two-thirds requirement for the presidential and vice-presidential nomination was passed by a vote of 269 to 13.

James Buchanan, Lewis Cass, William L. Marcy, and Stephen A. Douglas were the main candidates for the nomination. All of the candidates led the ballot for the presidential nomination at one point, but all of them failed to meet the two-thirds requirement. Franklin Pierce was put up for the nomination by the Virginia delegation. Pierce won the nomination when the delegates switched their support to him after he had received the unanimous support of the delegates from New England. He won on the second day of balloting after forty-nine ballots.

The delegation from Maine proposed that the vice-presidential nomination should be given to somebody from the Southern United States with William R. King being specifically named. King led on the first ballot before winning on the second ballot.

Whig Party nomination

 * Winfield Scott, commanding general of the U.S. Army from New Jersey
 * Millard Fillmore, president of the United States from New York
 * Daniel Webster, U.S. secretary of state from Massachusetts

The Whig Party held its national convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in June 1852. The call for the convention had been made by Whig members of the United States Congress and thirty-one states were represented. A vote to have each state's vote be based on its electoral college strength was passed by a vote of 149 to 144, but it was rescinded due to disagreements from the Southern states and smaller Northern states.

The party had been divided by the Compromise of 1850 and was divided over the presidential nomination between incumbent President Millard Fillmore, who received support from the South, and Winfield Scott, who received his support from the North. William H. Seward, who had been the main opponent of the compromise in the United States Senate and advised President Zachary Taylor against it, supported Scott. Fillmore offered to give his delegates to Daniel Webster if he received the support of forty-one delegates on his own, but Webster was unsuccessful. Scott won the nomination on the 53rd ballot. William Alexander Graham won the vice-presidential nomination without a formal vote.

Nine southern Whig members of Congress, including Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs, refused to support Scott.

Free Soil Party nomination

 * John P. Hale, U.S. senator from New Hampshire

The Free Soil Party was still the strongest third party in 1852. However, following the Compromise of 1850, most of the "Barnburners" who supported it in 1848 had returned to the Democratic Party while most of the Conscience Whigs rejoined the Whig Party. The second Free Soil National Convention assembled in the Masonic Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. New Hampshire senator John P. Hale was nominated for president with 192 delegate votes (sixteen votes were cast for a smattering of candidates). George Washington Julian of Indiana was nominated for vice president over Samuel Lewis of Ohio and Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio.

Union Party nomination
The Union party was formed in 1850, an offshoot of the Whig party in several Southern states, including Georgia. As the 1852 presidential election approached, Union party leaders decided to wait and see who was nominated by the two major parties. The movement to nominate Daniel Webster as a third-party candidate began in earnest following the Whig Convention, largely driven by those who had been strenuously opposed to Winfield Scott's nomination for president, among them Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and George Curtis. While Webster was against what he perceived as a "revolt" from the Whig Party and preferred not to be nominated, he let Americans vote for him should the party choose to nominate him.

The Union Party held its Georgia state convention on August 9, 1852, and nominated Webster for president and Charles J. Jenkins of Georgia for vice president. A formal convention was held at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 15, affirming the nominations made at the state convention in Georgia and rejecting Winfield Scott as nothing more than a military figure. The Webster/Jenkins ticket received nationwide support, particularly among Southern Whigs, but also in Massachusetts and New York, but it was largely perceived by many as nothing more than getting voters who would, in different circumstances, support Scott.

Webster had no real chance of winning the election, but even the new Know-Nothing party endorsed Webster and Jenkins, nominating them without even their own permission. However, Webster died nine days before the election of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 24, 1852.

Native American (Know-Nothing) Party nomination
Around the mid-1830s, nativists were present in New York politics, under the aegis of the American Republican Party. The American Republican party was formed in 1843 in major opposition to Catholicism and Catholic immigrants. In 1845, the party changed its name to the Native American Party. Their opponents nicknamed them the "Know Nothings" and the party liked the name and it became the nickname of the party after that until it collapsed in 1860. In 1852, the original presidential nominee planned by the Native American Party was Daniel Webster, the presidential nominee of the Union party. They nominated Webster without his permission, with George Corbin Washington (grandnephew of George Washington) as his vice presidential running mate. Webster died of natural causes nine days before the election, and the Know-Nothings quickly replaced Webster by nominating Jacob Broom for president and replaced Washington with Reynell Coates for vice president. In the future, former President Millard Fillmore would be their presidential nominee in 1856.

Southern Rights Party nomination

 * George Troup, former U.S. senator from Georgia

The Southern Rights Party was an offshoot of the Democratic party in several Southern states which advocated secession from the Union, electing a number of Congressmen and holding referendums on secession in a number of southern states, none of which were successful.

It was unclear in early 1852 if the Party would contest the presidential election. When the Alabama state convention was held in early March, only nine counties were represented. The party decided to see who was nominated by the two major national parties and support one of them if possible. When Georgia held its state convention, it acted as the state Democratic Party and sent delegates to the national convention.

After the Democratic National Convention, the Party was not sure that it wanted to support Franklin Pierce and William R. King, the Democratic nominees. Alabama held a state convention from July 13–15 and discussed at length the options of running a separate ticket or supporting Pierce and King. The convention was unable to arrive at a decision, deciding to appoint a committee to review the positions of Scott/Graham and Pierce/King with the option of calling a "national" convention if the two major-party tickets appeared deficient. The committee took its time reviewing the positions of Pierce and Scott, finally deciding on August 25 to call a convention for a Southern Rights Party ticket.

The convention assembled in Montgomery, Alabama, with 62 delegates present, a committee to recommend a ticket being appointed while the delegates listened to speeches in the interim. The committee eventually recommended former senator George Troup of Georgia for president, and former Governor John Quitman of Mississippi for vice president; they were unanimously nominated.

The two nominees accepted their nominations soon after the convention, which was held rather late in the season. Troup stated in a letter, dated September 27 and printed in the New York Times on October 16, that he had planned to vote for Pierce/King and had always wholeheartedly supported William R.D. King. He indicated in the letter that he preferred to decline the honor, as he was rather ill at the time and feared that he would die before the election. The Party's executive committee edited the letter to excise those portions which indicated that Troup preferred to decline, a fact which was revealed after the election.

Liberty Party nomination
The Liberty Party had ceased to become a significant political force after most of its members joined the Free Soil Party in 1848. Nonetheless, some of those who rejected the fusion strategy held a Liberty Party National Convention in Buffalo, New York. There were few delegates present, so a ticket was recommended and a later convention called. The Convention recommended Gerrit Smith of New York for president and Charles Durkee of Wisconsin for vice president. A second convention was held in Syracuse, New York, in early September 1852, but it too failed to draw enough delegates to select nominees. Yet a third convention gathered in Syracuse later that month and nominated William Goodell of New York for president and S.M. Bell of Virginia for vice president. A slate of electors pledged to Smith received 72 votes in New York.

Fall campaign
The Whigs' platform was almost indistinguishable from that of the Democrats, reducing the campaign to a contest between the personalities of the two candidates. The lack of clearcut issues between the two parties helped drive voter turnout down to its lowest level since 1836. The decline was further exacerbated by Scott's antislavery reputation, which decimated the Southern Whig vote at the same time as the pro-slavery Whig platform undermined the Northern Whig vote. After the Compromise of 1850 was passed, many of the southern Whig Party members broke with the party's key figure, Henry Clay.

Finally, Scott's status as a war hero was somewhat offset by the fact that Pierce was himself a Mexican–American War brigadier general.

The Democrats adopted the slogan: The Whigs we Polked in forty-four, We'll Pierce in fifty-two, playing on the names of Pierce and former President James K. Polk.

Just nine days before the election, Webster died, causing many Union state parties to remove their slates of electors. The Union ticket appeared on the ballot in Georgia and Massachusetts, however.

Results
When American voters went to the polls, Pierce won the electoral college in a landslide; Scott won only the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Vermont, while the Free Soil vote collapsed to less than half of what Martin Van Buren had earned in the previous election, with the party taking no states. The fact that Daniel Webster received a substantial share of the vote in Georgia and Massachusetts, even though he was dead, shows how disenchanted voters were with the two main candidates.

In the popular vote, while Pierce outpolled Scott by 220,000 votes, 17 states were decided by less than 10%, and eight by less than 5%. A shift of 69,000 votes to Scott in Delaware, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania would have left the electoral college in a 148–148 tie, forcing a contingent election in the House of Representatives.

As a result of the devastating defeat and the growing tensions within the party between pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery Northerners, the Whig Party quickly fell apart after the 1852 election and ceased to exist. Some Southern Whigs would join the Democratic Party, and many Northern Whigs would help to form the new Republican Party in 1854.

Some Whigs in both sections would support the so-called "Know-Nothing" party in the 1856 presidential election. Similarly, the Free Soil Party rapidly fell away into obscurity after the election, and the remaining members mostly opted to join the former Northern Whigs in forming the Republican Party.

The Southern Rights Party effectively collapsed following the election, attaining only five percent of the vote in Alabama, and a few hundred in its nominee's home state of Georgia. It would elect a number of Congressmen in 1853, but they would rejoin the Democratic Party upon taking their seats in Congress.

Kentucky and Tennessee were the only slave states that Scott won. None of the future Confederate states elected governors in the 1852 and 1853 gubernatorial elections and the Whigs only won 14 of the south's 65 seats in the U.S. House. The party held no state legislatures in the south except for in Tennessee. The Democrats, who carried all but two northern states, would see a decline in the north following the 1854 elections due to controversy around the Kansas–Nebraska Act. They lost control of all free state legislatures except for two and their seats in the U.S. House from the north fell from 93 to 23.

Source (Popular Vote):

Source (Electoral Vote):
 * The leading candidates for vice president were both born in North Carolina and in fact both attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, albeit two decades apart. While there, they were members of opposing debate societies: the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies. Both also served in North Carolina politics: King was a representative from North Carolina before he moved to Alabama, and Graham was a governor of North Carolina.

Records
This was the last election in which the Democrats won Michigan until 1932, the last in which the Democrats won Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio or Rhode Island until 1912, the last in which the Democrats won Wisconsin until 1892, the last in which the Democrats won Connecticut until 1876 and the last in which the Democrats won New York until 1868. It was, however, the last election in which the Democrats' chief opponent won Kentucky until 1896, and the last until 1928 in which the Democrats' opponent obtained an absolute majority in Kentucky.

Results by state
Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57.

States that flipped from Whig to Democratic

 * Connecticut
 * Delaware
 * Georgia
 * Florida
 * Louisiana
 * Maryland
 * New Jersey
 * New York
 * North Carolina
 * Pennsylvania
 * Rhode Island

Close states
States where the margin of victory was under 1%:
 * 1)  Delaware 0.19% (25 votes)
 * 2)  North Carolina 0.90% (735 votes)

States where the margin of victory was under 5%:
 * 1)  Tennessee 1.46% (1,686 votes)
 * 2)  Kentucky 3.12% (3,934 votes)
 * 3)  Louisiana 3.88% (1,392 votes)
 * 4)  Connecticut 4.23% (2,890 votes)
 * 5)  Ohio 4.65% (16,410 votes)

States where the margin of victory was under 10%:
 * 1)  Pennsylvania 5.02% (19,458 votes)
 * 2)  New York 5.21% (27,201 votes)  (tipping point state)
 * 3)  Iowa 5.39% (1,907 votes)
 * 4)  California 6.19% (4,749 votes)
 * 5)  Massachusetts 6.38% (8,114 votes)
 * 6)  Rhode Island 6.52% (1,109 votes)
 * 7)  Maryland 6.59% (4,945 votes)
 * 8)  New Jersey 6.91% (5,749 votes)
 * 9)  Indiana 7.88% (14,439 votes)
 * 10)  Michigan 9.62% (7,982 votes)

States

 * Baum, Dale. "Know-Nothingism and the Republican majority in Massachusetts: The political realignment of the 1850s." Journal of American History 64.4 (1978): 959–986. online
 * Beeler, Dale. "The Election of 1852 in Indiana." Indiana Magazine of History (1915): 301–323. online
 * Campbell, Randolph. "The Whig Party of Texas in the Elections of 1848 and 1852." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73.1 (1969): 17–34. online
 * Huston, James L. "The Illinois Political Realignment of 1844–1860: Revisiting the Analysis." Journal of the Civil War Era 1.4 (2011): 506–535. online
 * Morrill, James R. "The Presidential Election of 1852: Death Knell of the Whig Party of North Carolina." North Carolina Historical Review 44.4 (1967): 342–359 online.
 * Rosenberg, Morton M. "The Iowa Elections of 1852." Annals of Iowa 38.4 (1966). online
 * Solomon, Irvin D. "The Grass Roots Appearance of a National Party: The Formation of the Republican Party in Erie, Pennsylvania, 1852–1856." Western Pennsylvania History (1983): 209–222. online
 * Sweeney, Kevin. "Rum, Romanism, Representation, and Reform: Coalition Politics in Massachusetts, 1847–1853." Civil War History 22.2 (1976): 116–137.
 * Walton, Brian G. "Arkansas Politics during the Compromise Crisis, 1848–1852." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 36.4 (1977): 307–337. online

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1856 United States presidential election

The 1856 United States presidential election was the 18th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 1856. In a three-way election, Democrat James Buchanan defeated Republican nominee John C. Frémont and Know Nothing nominee Millard Fillmore. The main issue was the expansion of slavery as facilitated by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Buchanan defeated President Franklin Pierce at the 1856 Democratic National Convention for the nomination. Pierce had become widely unpopular in the North because of his support for the pro-slavery faction in the ongoing civil war in territorial Kansas, and Buchanan, a former Secretary of State, had avoided the divisive debates over the Kansas–Nebraska Act by being in Europe as the Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Slavery was the main issue, and with it the question of the survival of the United States as it then existed. The Democrats were seen as the pro-slavery party; the new Republican party, though hostile to slavery, limited its efforts to the politically more manageable question of the extension of slavery into federal territories (and its removal from the District of Columbia). The nativist Know Nothings (known formally as the American Party) competed with the Republicans to replace the moribund Whig Party as the primary opposition to the Democrats. They emphasized opposition to Catholic immigrants.

The 1856 Republican National Convention nominated a ticket led by Frémont, an explorer and military officer who had served in the Mexican–American War. The Know Nothings, who ignored slavery and instead emphasized anti-immigration and anti-Catholic policies, nominated a ticket led by former Whig President Millard Fillmore. Domestic political turmoil was a major factor in the nominations of both Buchanan and Fillmore, who appealed in part because of their recent time abroad, when they did not have to take a position on the divisive questions related to slavery.

The Democrats supported expansionist slave-holding policies generally of varying intensities. Southern Democrats were all in favor of the expansion of slavery. Some wanted to obtain Cuba as slave territory, as espoused by the Ostend Manifesto. Northern Democrats called for "popular sovereignty", which in theory would allow the residents in a territory to decide for themselves the legal status of slavery. In practice, in Kansas Territory, it produced a state-level civil war. Frémont opposed the expansion of slavery. Buchanan called that position "extremist", warning that a Republican victory would lead to disunion, a then constant issue of political debate which had already been long discussed and advocated. The Know Nothings attempted to present themselves as the one party capable of bridging the sectional divides. All three major parties found support in the North, but the Republicans had virtually no backing in the South.

Buchanan won a plurality of the popular vote and a majority of the electoral vote, taking all but one slave state and five free states. Frémont won a majority of electoral votes from free states and finished second in the nationwide popular vote, while Fillmore took 21.5% of the popular vote but only carried Maryland. The Know Nothings soon collapsed as a national party, as most of its anti-slavery members joined the Republican Party after the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court ruling. This election marked the end of the Second Party System, 1856 also proved to be the last Democratic presidential victory until 1884, as Republicans emerged as the dominant party during and after the Civil War. As of 2023, this is the only time that the Democrats won the presidency without any electoral votes from New England and the only time that a Republican swept this region without winning the presidency (losing New Hampshire to Woodrow Wilson in 1916 with a margin of 56 votes).

Nominations
The 1856 presidential election was primarily waged among three political parties, though other parties had been active in the spring of the year. The conventions of these parties are considered below in order of the party's popular vote.

Democratic Party nomination
Democratic candidates:
 * James Buchanan, Minister to Great Britain and former Secretary of State
 * Franklin Pierce, President of the United States
 * Stephen Douglas, U.S. Senator from Illinois
 * Lewis Cass, Former U.S. Senator and 1848 presidential nominee from Michigan

The Democratic Party was wounded from its devastating losses in the 1854–1855 midterm elections. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who had sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act, entered the race in opposition to President Franklin Pierce. The Pennsylvania delegation continued to sponsor its favorite son Buchanan.

The Seventh Democratic National Convention was held in Smith and Nixon's Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 2 to 6, 1856. The delegates were deeply divided over slavery. On the first ballot, Buchanan placed first with 135.5 votes to 122.5 for Pierce, 33 for Douglas, and 5 for Senator Lewis Cass, who had been the presidential nominee in 1848. With each succeeding ballot, Douglas gained at Pierce's expense. On the 15th ballot, most of Pierce's delegates shifted to Douglas in an attempt to stop Buchanan, but Douglas withdrew when it became clear Buchanan had the support of the majority of those at the convention, also fearing that his continued participation might lead to divisions within the party that could endanger its chances in the general election. For the first time in American history someone who had been elected president was denied re-nomination after seeking it.

A host of candidates were nominated for the vice presidency, but a number of them attempted to withdraw themselves from consideration, among them the eventual nominee, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Breckinridge, besides having been selected as an elector, was also supporting former Speaker of the House Linn Boyd for the vice presidential nomination. However, following a draft effort led by the delegation from Vermont, Breckinridge was nominated on the second ballot.

Republican Party nomination
Republican candidates:
 * John C. Frémont, former United States Senator from California
 * John McLean, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

The Republican Party was formed in early 1854 to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act. During the midterm elections of 1854–1855, the Republican Party was one of the patchwork of anti-administration parties contesting the election, but they were able to win thirteen seats in the House of Representatives for the 34th Congress. However, the party collaborated with other disaffected groups and gradually absorbed them. In the elections of 1855, the Republican Party won three governorships.

The first Republican National Convention was held in the Musical Fund Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 17 to 19, 1856. The convention approved an anti-slavery platform that called for congressional sovereignty in the territories, an end to polygamy in Mormon settlements, and federal assistance for a transcontinental railroad—a political outcome of the Pacific Railroad Surveys. John C. Frémont, John McLean, William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Charles Sumner all were considered by those at the convention, but the latter three requested that their names be withdrawn. Seward and Chase did not feel that the party was yet sufficiently organized to have a realistic chance of taking the White House and were content to wait until the next election. Sumner was in no fit condition to run after being violently assaulted on the Senate floor a month before the convention. McLean's name was initially withdrawn by his manager Rufus Spalding, but the withdrawal was rescinded at the strong behest of the Pennsylvania delegation led by Thaddeus Stevens. Kentucky was the only southern state to have a delegation at the convention. Frémont was nominated for president overwhelmingly on the formal ballot, and William L. Dayton was nominated for vice president over Abraham Lincoln.

American (Know-Nothing) Party nomination
American Party candidates:

 * Millard Fillmore, former President of the United States from New York
 * George Law, steamboat entrepreneur from New York

The American Party, formerly the Native American Party, was the vehicle of the Know Nothing movement. The American Party absorbed most of the former Whig Party that had not gone to either the Republicans or Democrats in 1854, and by 1855 it had established itself as the chief opposition party to the Democrats. In the 82 races for the House of Representatives in 1854, the American Party ran 76 candidates, 35 of whom won. None of the six independents or Whigs who ran in these races were elected.

The party gained control over the state governments of California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island in the 1854 and 1855 elections. The party also controlled the Tennessee legislature and received at least 45% of the vote in multiple southern states, far better than the Whig Party following 1848. The party then succeeded in electing Nathaniel P. Banks as Speaker of the House in the 34th Congress.

However, the party started to break apart at sectional lines over slavery. Henry Wilson led northern delegates out of the party's 1855 national council in Philadelphia in protest of it adopting a plank endorsing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 70 northern delegates left the 1856 convention to create the North American Party after a resolution calling for the Kansas-Nebraska Act to be repealed was defeated.

The American National Convention was held in National Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 22 to 25, 1856. Following the decision by party leaders in 1855 not to press the slavery issue, the convention had to decide how to deal with the Ohio chapter of the party, which was vocally anti-slavery. The convention closed the Ohio chapter and re-opened it under more moderate leadership. Delegates from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa, New England, and other northern states bolted when a resolution that would have required all prospective nominees to be in favor of prohibiting slavery north of the 36'30' parallel was voted down. This removed a greater part of the American Party's support in the North outside of New York, where the conservative faction of the Whig Party remained faithful.

While Banks was the early favorite for the party's presidential nomination, he publicly declined the nomination and effectively broke from the Know-Nothings, though he would not formally defect to the Republican Party until after the election. After Banks removed himself from consideration, the only name with much support was former President Millard Fillmore. Historian Allan Nevins says Fillmore was not a Know-Nothing or a nativist. He was out of the country when the presidential nomination came and had not been consulted about running. Furthermore, Fillmore was neither a member of the party nor had he ever attended an American [Know-Nothing] gathering nor had he by "spoken or written word [...] indicated a subscription to American tenets". Fillmore was nominated with 179 votes out of the 234 votes cast. The convention chose Andrew Jackson Donelson of Tennessee for vice president with 181 votes to 30 scattered votes and 24 abstentions. Although the nativist argument of the American party had considerable success in local and state elections in 1854–55, Fillmore in 1856 concentrated almost entirely on national unity. Historian Tyler Anbinder says, "The American party had dropped nativism from its agenda." Fillmore won 22% of the national popular vote.

North American Party nomination
North American Party candidates:
 * John C. Frémont, former Senator from California
 * Nathaniel P. Banks. Speaker of the House from Massachusetts
 * John McLean, Associate Justice
 * Robert F. Stockton, former Senator from New Jersey
 * William F. Johnston, Governor of Pennsylvania

The anti-slavery "Americans" from the North formed their own party after the nomination of Fillmore in Philadelphia. This party called for its national convention to be held in New York City, just before the Republican National Convention. Party leaders hoped to nominate a joint ticket with the Republicans to defeat Buchanan. The national convention was held on June 12 to 20, 1856 in New York. As John C. Frémont was the favorite to attain the Republican presidential nomination there was a considerable desire for the North American party to nominate him, but it was feared that in doing so they may possibly injure his chances to actually become the Republican presidential nominee. The delegates voted repeatedly on a nominee for president without a result. Nathaniel P. Banks was nominated for president on the 10th ballot over John C. Frémont and John McLean, with the understanding that he would withdraw from the race and endorse John C. Frémont once he had won the Republican presidential nomination. The delegates, preparing to return home, unanimously nominated Frémont on the 11th ballot shortly after his nomination by the Republican Party in Philadelphia. The chairman of the convention, William F. Johnston, had been nominated to run for vice president, but later withdrew when the North Americans and the Republicans failed to find an acceptable accommodation between him and the Republican vice presidential nominee, William Dayton.

North American Seceders Party nomination
North American Seceders Party candidates:
 * John C. Frémont, former senator from California
 * Nathaniel P. Banks. Speaker of the House from Massachusetts
 * John McLean, Associate Justice from Ohio
 * Robert F. Stockton, former Senator from New Jersey
 * William F. Johnston, Governor of Pennsylvania

A group of North American delegates called the North American Seceders withdrew from the North American Party's convention and met separately. They objected to the attempt to work with the Republican Party. The Seceders held their own national convention on June 16 and 17, 1856. 19 delegates unanimously nominated Robert F. Stockton for president and Kenneth Rayner for vice president. The Seceders' ticket later withdrew from the contest, with Stockton endorsing Millard Fillmore for the presidency.

Whig Party nomination
The Whig Party was reeling from electoral losses since 1852. Half of its leaders in the South bolted to the Southern Democratic Party. In the North the Whig Party was moribund with most of its anti-slavery members joining the Republican Party. This party remained somewhat alive in states like New York and Pennsylvania by joining the anti-slavery movement.

The fifth (and last) Whig National Convention was held in the Hall of the Maryland Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 17 and 18, 1856. There were one hundred and fifty delegates sent from twenty-six states. Though the leaders of this party wanted to keep the Whig Party alive, it became irretrievably doomed once these one hundred and fifty Whig delegates decided unanimously to endorse the American Party's national ticket of Fillmore and Donelson.

Liberty Party nomination
By 1856, very little of the Liberty Party remained. Most of its members joined the Free Soil Party in 1848 and nearly of all what remained of the party joined the Republicans in 1854. What remained of the party ran 1848 candidate Gerrit Smith under the name of the "National Liberty Party."

Campaign

None of the three candidates did any public campaigning. The Republican Party opposed the extension of slavery into the territories: in fact, its slogan was "Free speech, free press, free soil, free men, Frémont and victory!" The Republicans thus crusaded against the Slave Power, warning it was destroying republican values. Democrats warned that a Republican victory would bring a civil war.

The Republican platform opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise through the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which enacted the policy of popular sovereignty, allowing settlers to decide whether a new state would enter the Union as free or slave. The Republicans also accused the Pierce administration of allowing a fraudulent territorial government to be imposed upon the citizens of the Kansas Territory, thus engendering the violence that had raged in Bleeding Kansas. They advocated the immediate admittance of Kansas as a free state.

Along with opposing the spread of slavery into the continental territories of the United States, the party also opposed the Ostend Manifesto, which advocated the annexation of Cuba from Spain. In sum, the campaign's true focus was against the system of slavery, which they felt was destroying the republican values that the Union had been founded upon.

The Democratic platform supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act and popular sovereignty. The party supported the pro-slavery territorial legislature elected in Kansas, opposed the free-state elements within Kansas, and castigated the Topeka Constitution as an illegal document written during an illegal convention. The Democrats also supported the plan to annex Cuba, advocated in the Ostend Manifesto, which Buchanan helped devise while serving as minister to Britain. The most influential aspect of the Democratic campaign was a warning that a Republican victory would lead to the secession of numerous southern states. The main Democratic campaign was a counter-crusade against the Republicans. They ridiculed Frémont's military record and warned that his victory would bring civil war. Much of the private rhetoric of the campaign focused on unfounded rumors regarding Frémont—talk of him as president taking charge of a large army that would support slave insurrections, the likelihood of widespread lynchings of slaves, and whispered hope among slaves for freedom and political equality.

Because Fillmore was considered by many incapable of securing the presidency on the American ticket, Whigs were urged to support Buchanan. Democrats also called on nativists to make common cause with them against the specter of sectionalism even if they had once attacked their political views.

Fillmore and the Americans, meanwhile, insisted that they were the only "national party" since the Democrats leaning in favor of the South and the Republicans were fanatically in favor of Northern fanaticism.

A minor scandal erupted when the Americans, seeking to turn the national dialogue back in the direction of nativism, put out a false rumor that Frémont was in fact a Roman Catholic. Because of the Republican candidate's French-Canadian ancestry and surname, many voters accepted the allegation at face value. The Democrats ran with it, and the Republicans found themselves unable to counteract the rumor effectively given that while the statements were false, any stern message against those assertions might have crippled their efforts to attain the votes of German Catholics. Attempts were made to refute it through friends and colleagues, but the issue persisted throughout the campaign and might have cost Frémont the support of a number of American Party members.

The campaign had a different nature in the free states and the slave states. In the free states, there was a three-way campaign, which Frémont won with 45.2% of the vote to 41.5% for Buchanan and 13.3% for Fillmore; Frémont received 114 electoral votes to 62 for Buchanan. In the slave states, however, the contest was for all intents and purposes between Buchanan and Fillmore; Buchanan won 56.1% of the vote to 43.8% for Fillmore and 0.1% for Frémont, receiving 112 electoral votes to 8 for Fillmore.

Nationwide, Buchanan won 174 electoral votes, a majority, and was thus elected. Frémont received no votes in ten of the fourteen slave states with a popular vote; he obtained 306 in Delaware, 285 in Maryland, 283 in Virginia, and 314 in Kentucky.

Of the 1,713 counties making returns, Buchanan won 1,083 (63.22%), Frémont won 366 (21.37%), and Fillmore won 263 (15.35%). One county (0.06%) in Georgia split evenly between Buchanan and Fillmore.

This would be the only presidential election where the Know Nothing Party put up a campaign, as the party began to splinter. After the Supreme Court's controversial Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling in 1857, most of the anti-slavery members of the party joined the Republicans. The pro-slavery wing of the American Party remained strong on the local and state levels in a few southern states, but by the 1860 election, they were no longer a serious national political movement. Most of their remaining members either joined or supported the Constitutional Union Party in 1860.

Records
This was the last election in which the Democrats won Pennsylvania until 1936, the last in which the Democrats won Illinois until 1892, the last in which the Democrats won California until 1880, the last in which the Democrats won Indiana and Virginia until 1876 and the last in which the Democrats won Tennessee until 1872. This also started the long Republican trend in Vermont, which would not be broken until 1964, over a century later. The presidential election of 1856 was also the last time to date that a Democrat was elected to succeed a fellow Democrat as president, and the last one in which a former president ran for election to the presidency on a third party ticket until 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran on the Progressive Party ticket.

Results

Source (Popular Vote): Source (Electoral Vote):

(a) The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote.

Results by state
Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57.

States that flipped from Whig to Democratic

 * Kentucky
 * Tennessee

States that flipped from Democratic to Know-Nothing

 * Maryland

States that flipped from Whig to Republican

 * Massachusetts
 * Vermont

States that flipped from Democratic to Republican

 * Connecticut
 * Iowa
 * Maine
 * Michigan
 * New Hampshire
 * New York
 * Ohio
 * Rhode Island
 * Wisconsin

Close states
States where the margin of victory was under 5%:
 * 1)  Louisiana 3.40% (1,455 votes)
 * 2)  Illinois 3.86% (9,253 votes)
 * 3)  Ohio 4.30% (16,623 votes)
 * 4)  Tennessee 4.36% (5,826 votes)  (tipping point state for Buchanan victory)

States where the margin of victory was under 10%:
 * 1)  Kentucky 5.08% (7,226 votes)
 * 2)  New Hampshire 8.00% (5,582 votes)
 * 3)  Iowa 8.13% (7,505 votes)
 * 4)  Missouri 8.86% (9,442 votes)
 * 5)  Maryland 9.59% (8,329 votes)
 * 6)  Connecticut 9.61% (7,720 votes)

Other tipping point states:
 * 1)  Pennsylvania 18.12% (83,400 votes)  (tipping point state for Fremont victory)

Congressional certification
During the joint session of Congress to count the electoral votes, a dispute occurred over Wisconsin's slate. The electors of Wisconsin, delayed by a snowstorm, did not cast their votes for Frémont and Dayton until several days after the appointed time and sent a certificate mentioning this fact. When the votes for the state were opened by acting Vice President James Mason, he counted them over the objections of the leadership of both Houses of Congress.


text:
Talk:1836 United States presidential election

Election results table
How about a table border = 1, instead of 5? I think the thinner border is less imposing/distracting. Perhaps you could add that to your HTML script, Rob? maveric149

 * sure, I'll get that in the next batch of changes -- user:RobLa

See also: President of the United States, U.S. presidential election, 1836

Change it!
Change this page to match the format of the other election pages, that format is superior! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.228.220.93 (talk) 14:39, 24 September 2004 (UTC)

Senate vote
According to 26 Senate Journal 230 that the Senate vote was 33 – 16, not 33 – 17; some Senator failed to cast a ballot. I will make this change to the text momentarily. — DLJessup 07:47, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, according to the list here, both South Carolina senators also failed to cast a ballot. I suppose the "Some Senator" you alluded to was Hugh Lawson White. Perfectly understandable, I think. --Paul Pieniezny (talk) 13:43, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Tyler's party in 1836
LB-Versender just made a change in John Tyler's party alignment, changing him from a Democrat to a Whig. That particular datum has been in this article since October 17, 2004. I was skeptical of a change to such a long-standing datum, especially since LB-Versender used the Wikipedia article on John Tyler as his citation for the change, and that article said nothing about John Tyler's party alignment in 1836. (I also knew that Tyler was a former Democrat who was a lukewarm Whig and who would get drummed out of the party in 1841. It was entirely plausible that Tyler would be a Democrat in 1836 and a Whig in 1840.)

After doing some research, I believe that LB-Versender's change was correct, however. First of all, looking at the “Breakdown by ticket” section, every time a state's electors voted for Tyler, they voted for a Whig for President. (The breakdown by ticket data is backed up by the National Archive's state-by-state breakdown of electoral votes.) By this point in United States history, split-party tickets were an anomaly. Additionally, on page 36 of Michael F. Holt's The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (ISBN 0195055446), it is mentioned that Tyler was forced to resign his Senate seat when the Democrats retook the Virginia legislature and on page 60, Tyler is referred to as one of the Whig party's founders.

— DLJessup (talk) 14:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Same problem as the Lincoln page
We need to fix this. The fourth candidate is listed as getting the most electoral votes, along with the actual winner.J'onn J'onzz (talk) 22:37, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Lead section/infobox sizing issues
I'm using Mozilla - and it may be just me - but on my screen, the unusual size of the infobox featuring the candidates results in a very narrow lead section that doesn't look too spectacular. Would it be possible to go with a new infobox design that opts for height while sacrificing width, instead of the other way around (which is, as I say, rather atypical for Wikipedia and "A4" size pages in general). However, I'm not a layout "aficionado" by any means, so do what thou wilt :P. Peace :) Psychonavigation (talk) 02:16, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Michigan
I'm confused about something here. According to the article on Michigan, Michigan was admitted on January 26, 1837. This would've been after the election, so how did Michigan cast electoral votes if it would've been a territory at the time? XinaNicole (talk) 05:33, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Never mind ... just noticed the section on "disputes" XinaNicole (talk) 05:46, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

whig strategy, control of house of representatives
It is implied in this article that the House of Representatives would have chosen a Whig candidate if Van Buren didn't win a majority of electoral votes. Elsewhere on the www, I have seen it explicitly stated that the HoR was controlled by the Whigs. However, it was actually controlled by the Jacksons/Democratic party (http://artandhistory.house.gov/house_history/index.aspx). It seems almost certain they would have chosen Van Buren, anyway. Well, it does to me at least, but I'm not an expert. -- ElApuesto (talk) 17:19, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

 * Indeed - it looks like a pretty enormous Democratic majority based on 24th United States Congress - 139 Democrats and 102 Whigs, Anti-Masons, and Nullifiers. However, looking at it by state, Democrats look to have had majorities in Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (12 states), their opponents in Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont (10 states), with Maryland, Mississippi, and Missouri, divided evenly (3 states).  To be elected by the House, you needed 13 states.  Of course, the Whig congressman in Mississippi died in July and was replaced by a Democrat in December, which gave Van Buren what he would have needed.  But if that hadn't happened, you'd likely have a situation where Van Buren gets 12 states, Harrison gets 6 (Delaware, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont), and White gets 4 (Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee).  But even a deadlock doesn't help the Whigs - Johnson, elected VP by the Senate, would then have become president.  So they would need a) to agree themselves between Harrison and White (and it's extremely unlikely the South Carolinians, who might not even have accepted White, would accept Harrison, or that the New Englanders would be enthusiastic about White); and b) persuade Democratic congressmen in Maryland, Missouri, and Mississippi to at least absent themselves to allow a Whig majority.  Hard to see that happening.  Maybe the plan was to have the electors settle on a candidate after being elected due to supposed support for more popular favorite sons. john k (talk) 17:37, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

 * Looking for actual sources on this issue, this article suggests that in fact there was no Whig strategy at all, and certainly not one to throw the election to the House. What happened was just that the Southern opponents of Jackson would not agree to a Whig candidate, and instead nominated the basically Democratic White, and then the northerners concentrated around Harrison as a compromise candidate who could unite erstwhile National Republicans and Anti-Masons. Once that situation had arisen, though, the opposition did hope to deny Van Buren an electoral college majority and then somehow win, but it's not clear how - apparently there was some thought of all the electors settling on Harrison, but it's unclear if that would work out.  McCormick also has a different take on the House than our tally in 24th Congress would suggest, giving Van Buren 10 majorities and the opposition 11, and notes that it's impossible to say who would have come out the victor, as it's unclear whether representatives would have felt constrained to vote for the winner in their state, among other things.  The idea of a strategy to throw the election to the House seems to have been more a Democratic fear than a Whig strategy - they seemed to believe that Biddle and the bankers would buy the presidency for Harrison if it came to that. john k (talk) 18:40, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

On a different, but related, note: The article does open claiming that the multi-candidate Whig party nominees were some clever strategy. But further on, the article points out that the Whigs could not all agree on one ticket due to the increasing rifts in politics re slavery. Not being able to agree is not a strategy in the normal sense of that word! I think john k's comment, above, points to this as well. I'm just pointing out the failure of logic within a single article.

 * I think it was half-and-half. It was a strategy in that if the party organization couldn't settle on a candidate, getting the voters to go along was likely a lost cause.  I'm guessing that it was a byproduct of Webster being in the mix to start with as much as anything (Webster was going to "bounce" in the South).  But basically the "strategy" was probably best phrased as "We can't work this out now, so let's deal with it once the votes come in".  Probably the better question is whether, should they have gotten a majority overall, there would have been an effort to corral the electors to either one Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate in December (particularly as the Dems were still well-positioned in the House/Senate)?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.126.206 (talk) 06:10, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Webster? Magnum?
Is there a reason Webster and Magnum are not in the infobox? Both received electoral votes and, according to the article, were legitimate candidates. Webster received 3% of the popular vote, which was more than Strom Thurmond in 1948. I am assuming the fact that the electors for Magnum were selected by the SC state legislature is the reason he is not included, but that is dubious reasoning at best. Is there any reason they should not be listed?Nathaniel Greene (talk) 23:47, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Cartograph displays Mangum as an Independent, while the text and tables display him as Whig. Which is it? For comparison, I did a google search, and got mainly that Mangum was Whig.Henryxmartin (talk) 09:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Spelling
Please can someone, fortunate enough to know how to, correct the spelling of "Mangum" where it is written beside the graphic of the USA with variously colored states? Harfarhs (talk) 22:54, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅ File:ElectoralCollege1836.svg was fixed by Rrostrom back in June 2016. YBG (talk) 00:22, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Senate Vote
looks like 49 senators voted out 52 senate seats any idea what happened to the other 3 ?

 * Too wild a night in the tavern the night before? (Joking aside, might have been Democrats who had the same issue that the VA electors did.)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.126.206 (talk) 06:04, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

AK and MI
Might be worth mentioning that this was the first presidential election in which Arkansas and Michigan voted.SecretName101 (talk) 09:27, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Control of the House (in discussion of a possible contingent election)
I know the Democrats retained control of the House (in terms of seat count), but did they control a majority of the delegations? With the scattered House election schedule, I'm not sure if they would have had control of enough delegations to pack Van Buren through. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.126.206 (talk) 06:02, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

New lead images
We should change the lead images to photographs. This was an election that had very minimal use of photography, but enough so that photographs for all the major candidates (Except for Hugh L. White, but for him, I just used a B&W engraving.) can be obtained. Here are my proposals. Thoughts? The Image Editor (talk) 22:45, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Mangum
In the past (and the current state by state results) it displays Mangum as having received 0 popular votes as he only ran in South Carolina, which lacked the popular vote; a recent edit put Mangum as receiving 0.2% of the popular vote; does anyone have a source on this? PeacockShah (talk) 02:18, 21 March 2021 (UTC)