AHC: Unified, anti-Lincoln ticket.

First, what would it take for there to be a coherent, unified, and nationwide anti-Lincoln movement, instead of having three separate parties in most states?

Second, could such a ticket win, since OTL Lincoln only received 40% of the votes, but 60% of the electoral vote?

Third, what affect would a unified effort have on secession if Lincoln wins? Or, what affect would an anti-Lincoln victory have on the slavery debate and/or secession? Bonus if Breckinridge is the anti-Lincoln canidate.
 
1) That would require ASBs.

2) The unified ticket would still lose. They'd only gain California's 3 votes in the electoral college.

3) The majority of those supporting a Northern Democrat-Southern Democrat-Constitutional Union fusion ticket was opposed to secession. They also would have such godlike skills at negotiation and compromise just to form that they wouldn't consider secession as an option.
 
You might have a united Democratic party which is more able to run a successful campaign, which might be able to do better at competing with Lincoln than a divided Democratic party.

Maybe. The Democrats are probably screwed unless there's an earlier POD.
 
Barring a dramatic reversal en masse on the part of the southerners in the party this doesn't seem possible.

There might also be a question as to vote turnout as the southern turnout should Stephen Douglas win the nomination may be depressed, although the electoral votes would still go to him.


The odds of Breckenridge getting the nomination are...well, his popular support was the lowest of the Democrats who ran that year.
 
There's really no plausible scenario in which an anti-Lincoln ticket could defeat him in 1860, as he garnered majorities in all the states he won except California, Oregon, and New Jersey, which splits its EVs. And combining the Northern and Southern wings of the Democrats would depress turnout in the other section. Only Bell could hope to retain the full anti-Lincoln vote share, and his campaign, with its ridiculous "our position is that we have no position" stance, carries its own problems.
 
First, what would it take for there to be a coherent, unified, and nationwide anti-Lincoln movement, instead of having three separate parties in most states?

Second, could such a ticket win, since OTL Lincoln only received 40% of the votes, but 60% of the electoral vote?

Third, what affect would a unified effort have on secession if Lincoln wins? Or, what affect would an anti-Lincoln victory have on the slavery debate and/or secession? Bonus if Breckinridge is the anti-Lincoln canidate.

I think the only way this is successful is if Lincoln is not the nominee. If Douglass doesn't have to explain Free Soil in the Lincoln-Douglass debates then he could go on and be that superhuman negotiator. Just an idea. What are you trying to accomplish?
 
It was just an idea a friend and I were tossing around. I think we started by discussing ways to get more states secede, then the topic of a better POTCS came up, i.e. Breckenridge. For irony I brought up the idea of Breckenridge as POTUS.
 
Lincoln would probably lose Oregon and California, where he only won a plurality IOTL. But assuming everything else turns out the same, in the sense of which states voted for Lincoln and which states did not, Lincoln would still win.

Assuming all the people who voted against Lincoln vote the same way, the Democratic candidate would get about 60% of the popular vote, and still lose.

However, if you can somehow flip Illinois and Indiana, the Democrats would win. The problem then, is getting a candidate that would unify the Democratic party.
 
The great key to understanding the 1860 election was that the Democratic Party could no longer be united because of slavery. The various events of the last several years had reached a point where northern Democrats were no longer willing to defer to southern Democrats on the issue of slavery, and compromise was no longer possible.

You had the northern Democrats who supported Stephen Douglas who supported popular sovereignty, but who would not force slavery on those territories which did not want it.

You had southern Democrats who wanted absolute protection of slavery's future and expansion. They supported John Breckenridge.

Finally, you had those people who hoped the entire conflict could be resolved by keeping things exactly as they were, and they supported John Bell. This group is often associated with southern Whigs who weren't Democrats, but who couldn't support the free soil Republicans.

All major political parties are actually coalitions of different interest groups who merely find agreement on most things and are willing to compromise in order to win elections. Eventually, those coalitions find the political situation has changed and that they no longer have enough in common to continue to work together. Historically that marks one of the great political realignments in American history, which have had several of them. The Democrats simply could not agree anymore on the slavery issue, and were bound to disintegrate.

The Republicans though were entirely united on the slavery issue. They were completely against its further spread, although its members disagreed on the issue of abolition. Lincoln was chosen as the nominee because he was, in fact, a moderate who could have broad appeal.

The 1860 election showed that a candidate no longer needed to win the south in order to become elected president. That's what prompted the fire eaters to secede. Any Republican who won would have caused that reaction.

But no matter who the Republican nominee was, the Democrats were no longer capable of unity. Southern slave owners wanted to make radical changes in policy to keep their cooperation. Unless northern Democrats, who were the majority of the party, were going to completely let a minority seize control, the southerners were going to walk out.

Furthermore, if you look at the electoral map, each of the candidates basically ran separate campaigns that appealed to a very small sectional group. Douglas's votes were in the north, and Breckenridge and Bell split the vote in the South (which Lincoln was never going to win anyway). Even if everyone who voted against Lincoln voted for one candidate, that only meant Lincoln would not win CA and OR which together had 7 electoral votes. So Lincoln would still win the electoral college by 173 to 130. Of course, he'd lose the popular vote.

But this would never happen, because the Democrats cannot unite. The northern and southern Democrats could no longer agree on slavery. Any candidate acceptable to one group is not acceptable to the other.
 
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