1864 United States presidential election

1864 United States presidential election

← 1860 November 8, 1864 1868 →
234 members[a] (+17 invalidated)[b] of the Electoral College 118 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	73.8%[3] 7.4 pp
Nominee Abraham Lincoln George B. McClellan Party National Union Democratic Alliance Parties Republican War Democrats Unconditional Union Home state Illinois New Jersey Running mate Andrew Johnson George H. Pendleton Electoral vote 212 (+17 invalidated)[a][b] 21 States carried 22 (+2 invalidated) 3 Popular vote 2,218,388 1,812,807 Percentage 55.1% 44.9%
Presidential election results map. Dark Red denotes states won by Lincoln/Johnson, Blue denotes those won by McClellan/Pendleton, and Maroon denotes non-voting Confederate states. The seceded states of Louisiana and Tennessee, which had recently been captured from Confederate control, held elections; however, no electoral votes were counted from either of them due to their allegiance to the Confederacy.[2] One of Nevada's three electors was snowbound and unable to cast a vote for President or Vice President.[1] Numbers indicate electoral votes cast by each state.
President before election Abraham Lincoln Republican Elected President Abraham Lincoln National Union

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 1864, near the end of the American Civil War. Incumbent President Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party easily defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan, by a wide margin of 212–21 in the electoral college, with 55% of the popular vote. For the election, the Republican Party and some Democrats created the National Union Party, especially to attract War Democrats.

Despite some intra-party opposition from Salmon Chase and the Radical Republicans, Lincoln won his party's nomination at the 1864 National Union National Convention. Rather than re-nominate Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, the convention selected Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a War Democrat, as Lincoln's running mate. John C. Frémont, who had been the Republican nominee in 1856, started to run as the nominee of the new Radical Democracy Party, with War Democrat John Cochrane as Frémont's running mate; the new party criticized Lincoln for being too moderate on the issue of racial equality, but Frémont and Cochrane withdrew from the race in September and their new party dissolved. The Democrats were divided between the Copperheads, who favored immediate peace with the Confederacy, and War Democrats, who supported the war. The 1864 Democratic National Convention nominated McClellan, a War Democrat, but adopted a platform advocating peace with the Confederacy, which McClellan rejected, although his running mate George H. Pendleton wrote it. While the Confederacy seemed to have survival potential in summer 1864, it was visibly collapsing by election day in November.

Despite his early fears of defeat, Lincoln won strong majorities in the popular and electoral vote, partly as a result of the recent Union victory at the Battle of Atlanta.^[4] As the Civil War was still raging, no electoral votes were counted from any of the eleven southern states that had joined the Confederate States of America.^[2] Lincoln's re-election ensured that he would preside over the successful conclusion of the Civil War.

Lincoln's victory made him the first president to win re-election since Andrew Jackson in 1832, as well as the first Northern president to ever win re-election. Lincoln was assassinated less than two months into his second term, and he was succeeded by his vice president, Andrew Johnson, who favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union without protection for the former slaves. This led to conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1868. He was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.

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