Which President had a better chance at being re-elected on a 3rd Party pre-1900?

Who do you think could realiticallty be re-elected


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Definitely Fillmore. The Free Soilers in 1848 did not even come close to getting a single electoral vote. Fillmore in 1856 carried Maryland and came close to carrying Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana. http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1856.txt Had he carried those last-named three states, the race would have gone into the House. Theoretically, Fillmore might win there if he could get the support of all House members who had at least at one time been affiliated with Know Nothing lodges. In practice, this was not likely: "Fillmore backers overestimated their strength in Congress because many (if not most) congressmen who had once belonged to Know Nothing lodges had subsequently severed their ties to the Order. The National American candidate for Speaker never polled more than forty-one votes, so Fillmore was unlikely to control a majority of the congressional delegations." http://books.google.com/books?id=HBZxbQRA0JkC&pg=PA237 Yet is it not possible that even some former Know Nothings who had become Republicans might vote for Fillmore if it is clear that the only alternative is Buchanan or a deadlock in the House which will result in Breckinridge (who would have been chosen as vice-president by the Senate) becoming acting president ?
 
My logic of comparing the two, rather disparate in vote numbers, was that Van Buren had much more of a personally loyal following compared to Fillmore. The recently disposed President who, while much more successful, did piggybacked off the success of the Know-Nothings and had a captive audience in the form of the Southern Ex-Whigs and anti-Democrats. If Van Buren had some more backing from regular Democrats, or the Cass campaign majorly fell through, that could lead a diffrent way.
 
Van Buren was not even on the ballot in any slave state except Delaware--where he got 0.66% of the vote. http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1848&fips=10&f=0&off=0&elect=0 If the election went into the House, this by itself would be enough to keep him from winning, since the slave states controlled half the House delegations.

Moreover, he was extremely weak in many of the free states as well--e.g., Pennsylvania, where he only got 3.06 percent of the vote, http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1848&fips=42&f=0&off=0&elect=0 or New Jersey, where he only got 1.05 percent. http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1848&off=0&elect=0&fips=34&f=0 He didn't do much better in Indiana with 5.30 percent. http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1848&fips=18&f=0&off=0&elect=0

Moreover, he couldn't get a lot of antislavery Whigs to support him: Benjamin Wade and William Seward (not to mention Abraham Lincoln) all supported the Louisiana slaveholder Taylor instead.

In fact, militant antislavery men had good reason for viewing Van Buren with suspicion. As James Russell Lowell's "Birdofreedom Sawin" remarked:

I used to vote for Martin, but, I swan, I 'm clean disgusted,—
He aint the man thet I can say is fittin' to be trusted;
He ain't half autislav'ry 'nough, nor I ain't sure, ez some be,
He 'd go in for abolishin' the Deestrick o' Columby;
An', now I come to recollect, it kin' o' maks me sick 'z
A horse, to think o' ivut he wuz in eighteen thirty-six.
http://books.google.com/books?id=vD5BAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA205

In any event, there is just no way Van Buren is going to get elected as a Free Soiler in 1848, period. If at the last minute Cass is caught with the proverbial dead girl or live boy, many of his supporters will vote for Taylor (who after all did not have a record as a partisan Whig) rather than Van Buren, and others will stay home.
 
Let's imagine that Van Buren wins the electoral vote of every state where he won at least five percent of the OTL vote. Repeat: not twenty or fifteen or ten but *five* percent. It seems quite fantastic to assume that Van Buren would win states where 95% of the voters rejected him in OTL but let's do it.

Guess what: he *still* wouldn't win. There were 290 electoral votes in 1848, so to win in the Electoral College you had to get 146. The states where Van Buren got at least 5.0 percent were CT (6 electoral votes), IL (9), IN (12), ME (9), MA (12), MI (5), NH (6), NY (36), OH (23), RI (4), VT (6) and WI (4). Combine all those states and you get 132 electoral votes--fourteen short of a majority. Even if you throw in Iowa, where Van Buren got just short of five percent (4.95 percent) he gets only 136 electoral votes, ten short of a majority. http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/data.php?year=1848&datatype=national&def=1&f=0&off=0&elect=0 To get a majority for Van Buren in the Electoral College, you have to have him carry at least one state where he got about *three* percent of the vote (Pennsylvania, Van Buren's best state other than those already mentioned) or less.

And if Van Buren couldn't win in the Electoral College, he couldn't win at all. As I noted, half the House delegations were from slave states, and they alone would be enough to prevent his getting elected, even if he wins every northern delegation, which of course he won't.
 
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