And your evidence for that is what, exactly?
DiogenesLamp: "You do know the Lincoln Administration manipulated the news to help him in that election, don't you?
He hid damaging news stories from the public so they wouldn't know what a bloody mess the war was."
During the Civil War, newspapers published the only thing that really mattered to most citizens -- casualty lists.
When a family member was killed, wounded or missing, no other news really mattered.
The war itself did influence voters, and until the Union's battlefield successes in the fall of 1864, Lincoln himself believed the war was going so badly he would not win reelection.
DiogenesLamp: "As for the soldier's vote, I wouldn't put much stock in that.
How many of them got to hear anything except what their officers wanted them to hear?
Given the underhanded style of the Lincoln government, it should not surprise me at all if they fixed the vote for the soldiers."
After the Civil War, the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) and the G.O.P. (Grand Old Party) were almost synonymous.
The GAR's slogan was "Vote as You Shot", and they helped elect many Republican presidents, well into the 20th century.
So, any suggestions that Union troops were not just as committed to the Republican Party as Confederate troops were to the Democrats, is just nonsense.
Even as Radical Republican newspapers like Horace Greeley's New York Herald flipped sides from Republican to Democratic after the Civil War, Union soldiers remained loyal to the Republicans the rest of their lives.
Grand Army of the Republic memorial, Washington, DC: