Early Election Results (pre-1824)

[jimrtex]

I just received 'United States Presidential Elections 1788-1860: the official results by county and state' by Michael Dubin.

Of particular interest is its coverage of the pre-1824 elections from which I had never seen before (and many persons believe that there were not popular elections for electors at that time).  The book suggests that the reason that most compilations start with 1824 is that it was the first contested election since 1812, and 18 of 24 states had adopted popular election of electors by that time, and that this led to the first national compilation of voting results.

I would speculate that once it was known that the House of Representatives would be choosing the President, that partisans of the various candidates would have an interest in compiling the popular votes to demonstrate that their candidate was the choice of the people.