Results
by Electoral College vote
The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. That election was noteworthy for exaggerated sectionalism in a country that was soon to dissolve into civil war. In yet another presidential election, no party found the key to popular-vote majorities. All six Presidents elected since Andrew Jackson (1832) had been one-term presidents, the last four elected with a popular vote under 51%. But Lincoln had won an Electoral College majority by carrying states above the Mason-Dixon Line and north of the Ohio River, plus the far west California and Oregon. Unlike his predecessors, he carried not one slave-holding state.
Lincoln won in the Electoral College with less than 40% of the popular vote nationwide, and the split in the Democratic party is sometimes held responsible for Lincoln's victory. But Lincoln would still have won in the Electoral College, 169 to 134, even if all anti-Lincoln voters had united behind a single candidate. Republican victory was due to the concentration of votes in the free states which together controlled a majority of the presidential electors. In the three states where anti-Lincoln vote did combine into fusion tickets, Lincoln still won in two states and split New Jersey's electoral college.
Like Lincoln, Breckinridge and Bell won no electoral votes outside their section. While Bell retired to his family business, quietly supporting his state's secession, Breckinridge served as a Confederate general. He finished second in the Electoral College with 72 votes, carrying 11 of 15 slave states. He won a distant third in national popular vote at 18%, but he accrued 50-75% in the first seven states that would become the Confederacy, and took nine of the eleven states which eventually joined.
Bell carried three slave states Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, and lost Maryland by 722 votes. Nevertheless, he finished a remarkable second in all the slave states won by Breckinridge and Douglas. He won 45-47% for Maryland, Tennessee and North Carolina and he canvassed respectably with 36-40% in Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana, Georgia and Florida. While Bell trailed last in national popular vote at 12% in the event, he had a winning total of 177 electoral votes in play when adding his fusion tickets in Rhode Island 38%, New York 46% and New Jersey 52%
Douglas was the only candidate winning electoral votes in both sections, free New Jersey and slave Missouri. But he finished last in the Electoral College. His support was geographically the most widespread, finishing second behind Lincoln in the popular vote with 29.5%. He gained 51% of the vote in New Jersey to split, and 35% in Missouri to win its electoral votes. Douglas gained a 28-47% share in the states of the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Trans-Mississippi West, slipping to 19-39% in New England. Outside his section, Douglas took 15-17% of the popular vote total in the slave states of Kentucky, Alabama and Louisiana, then 10% or less in the nine remaining slave states.
Read more about this topic: United States Presidential Election, 1860
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