A possible and unprecedented EC snafu in 1860

[Adam Griffin]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Nym90]

This really illustrates how undemocratic the Electoral College is; in this scenario in which every anti-Lincoln vote is cast for the same candidate, Lincoln loses the popular vote by more than 60% to 40% but still wins.

[Asian Nazi]

This really illustrates how undemocratic the Electoral College is; in this scenario in which every anti-Lincoln vote is cast for the same candidate, Lincoln loses the popular vote by more than 60% to 40% but still wins.

No, it just demonstrates how undemocratic the South was.  I'm sure the popular vote would've been much closer if 1. Lincoln had actually been allowed on the ballot in the South and most of all 2. they hadn't been actively disenfranchising the overwhelming majority of their population

[Bismarck]

Another benefit of the electoral college is that it prevents a candidate from winning who is only popular in one region. Lincoln won the Midwest, northeast, and had strong support in the west. A candidate can't win just by maxing out the vote in one region.

[Adam Griffin]

This really illustrates how undemocratic the Electoral College is; in this scenario in which every anti-Lincoln vote is cast for the same candidate, Lincoln loses the popular vote by more than 60% to 40% but still wins.

No, it just demonstrates how undemocratic the South was.  I'm sure the popular vote would've been much closer if 1. Lincoln had actually been allowed on the ballot in the South and most of all 2. they hadn't been actively disenfranchising the overwhelming majority of their population

OK, so there were 1,002,808 votes cast in states where non-Lincoln candidates received 95% or more (in all but two, they received 100%). There were 4,681,267 votes cast nationally, so that means that these states comprised a paltry 21.4% of the popular vote, despite comprising 92 EVs, which was 30.4% of the EV.

Side-note: Now, this part is rather irrelevant (other than showing the size of the South relative to its voting class), but I'm unsure whether the Census counts themselves were directly impacted by the Three-Fifths Compromise or not. The reason I say this is because the South's percentage of population relative to total population in the 1860 Census was 30.6%, which makes no sense to me if slaves were being counted 1:1 and the number of EVs/representation was 30.4% (practically identical). Assuming only 60% of slaves were being counted in Census numbers, then the South comprised 35.2% of the country's population.

At any rate, take that 21.4% of the voting population that went 99.5% or so for Douglas in this scenario and give Lincoln half of their votes, which would still never come close to happening, even if both of the criteria you outlined were in effect (source: 1876 presidential election, which was as optimistic as it got in real life; where Tilden got more than 60% of the popular vote in these states combined). With the 50/50 dynamic in the South, the result would be:

Lincoln: 2,352,383 (50.25%)
Douglas: 2,328,344 (49.74%)

So yeah, at best...a very slender victory for Lincoln if you ignore all of the realities of the times, add in all optimistic variables and then add another ten points minimum to Lincoln's regional total on top of that.

Additionally, remember that the GOP was a new concept in 1860 and Lincoln wouldn't have been viewed as a savior by blacks in a world in which black people were already treated as people and guaranteed the right to vote. They would have been far more likely to vote as their neighbors did, and their neighbors - as kind of proven by 100 years of white Southern voting patterns, later black Southern voting patterns by joining the same party as their white neighbors and 150 years of white behavior that followed - would still be kind of bent out of shape over the whole notion that blacks were then being treated equally. I highly doubt that Lincoln would have gotten over a quarter of the vote in your (logically-extended) scenario in these states combined.

[Nym90]

This really illustrates how undemocratic the Electoral College is; in this scenario in which every anti-Lincoln vote is cast for the same candidate, Lincoln loses the popular vote by more than 60% to 40% but still wins.

No, it just demonstrates how undemocratic the South was.  I'm sure the popular vote would've been much closer if 1. Lincoln had actually been allowed on the ballot in the South and most of all 2. they hadn't been actively disenfranchising the overwhelming majority of their population

OK, so there were 1,002,808 votes cast in states where non-Lincoln candidates received 95% or more (in all but two, they received 100%). There were 4,681,267 votes cast nationally, so that means that these states comprised a paltry 21.4% of the popular vote, despite comprising 92 EVs, which was 30.4% of the EV.

Side-note: Now, this part is rather irrelevant (other than showing the size of the South relative to its voting class), but I'm unsure whether the Census counts themselves were directly impacted by the Three-Fifths Compromise or not. The reason I say this is because the South's percentage of population relative to total population in the 1860 Census was 30.6%, which makes no sense to me if slaves were being counted 1:1 and the number of EVs/representation was 30.4% (practically identical). Assuming only 60% of slaves were being counted in Census numbers, then the South comprised 35.2% of the country's population.

At any rate, take that 21.4% of the voting population that went 99.5% or so for Douglas in this scenario and give Lincoln half of their votes, which would still never come close to happening, even if both of the criteria you outlined were in effect (source: 1876 presidential election, which was as optimistic as it got in real life; where Tilden got more than 60% of the popular vote in these states combined). With the 50/50 dynamic in the South, the result would be:

Lincoln: 2,352,383 (50.25%)
Douglas: 2,328,344 (49.74%)

So yeah, at best...a very slender victory for Lincoln if you ignore all of the realities of the times, add in all optimistic variables and then add another ten points minimum to Lincoln's regional total on top of that.

Additionally, remember that the GOP was a new concept in 1860 and Lincoln wouldn't have been viewed as a savior by blacks in a world in which black people were already treated as people and guaranteed the right to vote. They would have been far more likely to vote as their neighbors did, and their neighbors - as kind of proven by 100 years of white Southern voting patterns, later black Southern voting patterns by joining the same party as their white neighbors and 150 years of white behavior that followed - would still be kind of bent out of shape over the whole notion that blacks were then being treated equally. I highly doubt that Lincoln would have gotten over a quarter of the vote in your (logically-extended) scenario in these states combined.

Good analysis. Thanks for confirming my intuition.

[Nym90]

Another benefit of the electoral college is that it prevents a candidate from winning who is only popular in one region. Lincoln won the Midwest, northeast, and had strong support in the west. A candidate can't win just by maxing out the vote in one region.

I think the EC made a lot more sense in the 1700s/1800s than it does today. With how much more difficult transportation and communication was then, one would expect that regional differences were much greater and regional interests much more different than today, and thus more of a need to respect those via greater states' rights as opposed to having a purer national democracy. Also, vote fraud would have been much easier to perpetrate at that time than today due to much less media coverage/transparency of the process.