“If the Democrats and other anti-Republican forces had gotten behind a single candidate and Lincoln had lost those three states but carried the rest, he would still have won the election, and there could have been a situation where a candidate with under 40% of the popular vote won the electoral college and the election.”
And that was my point. The south saw that this was the case, CA and OR notwithstanding.
JCBreckenridge: "And that was my point.
The south saw that this was the case, CA and OR notwithstanding."
I don't agree, I think a united Democrat candidate in 1860 had a fighting chance, for the same reason that they had won in 1856: many people, then as now, vote for the party they think will win.
Plus, in those days Democrats were the "fusion party", uniting Free and Slave states.
Before 1860, to vote Democrat was to vote for the Union.
But, once Democrats split, North versus South, they were obviously neither the majority nor the "party of union".
Therefore many Democrats switched to Republicans, or in the Upper South to John Bell's Constitutional Union ticket.
You can see this clearly in the Pennsylvania vote, where Democrats lost 35,000 votes, Republicans picked up those votes and carried the state.
And the vote was still close enough in other 1856 Democrat states to give a united ticked a fighting chance to win.
That's why I say, in 1860 Democrats committed political suicide, under the direction of Southern Fire Eaters, who engineered Lincoln's election for the purpose of justifying secession in the minds of average white Southerners.