Likely, and some have argued that here.
But elections are as much about contagious enthusiasm as anything else, and Democrats in 1860 had none, Republicans plenty.
Had Democrats in 1860 remained united behind, say, a Southern senator, that may have gone a long way to improving their voters' enthusiasm.
28 electoral votes flipped would put the 1860 election into the House of Representatives, and there were nearly 100 electoral votes won by Lincoln with single digit margins.
But one problem the Democrats had is that a candidate too closely identified with one section or the other - North or South - would be unacceptable in the other section. So a candidate more identified with the South would face trouble in those Northern states.
And the economy may still have been a problem after the Panic of 1857. People were still complaining about it, if I remember rightly, and that may have been an underlying factor in Lincoln's victory.
But if Lincoln had beaten Douglas and become a front-runner for the nomination and the presidency, he would have faced all the scrutiny that Douglas (and Seward) did.
Easterners wouldn't like the rude, uncultivated Westerner.
Anti-slavery militants would have found him weak and wobbly when it came to slavery.
The less militant might have come to suspect Lincoln of being a secret abolitionist.
All those speeches that people dig up now to show that Lincoln didn't believe in racial equality would have been picked through by enemies to prove that he did.