In the 1824 election, there were enough Jackson/Calhoun, Adams/Calhoun, Crawford/Calhoun, and Clay/Calhoun electors that unlike the Presidential election which went into the House, Calhoun won the Vice Presidency outright without the Senate having to choose. The primary difficulty is that most States don't allow for electoral fusion, so that in a theoretical three-party race in which the PV in a State went:
Party One: Candidate P / Candidate V : 35%
Party Two: Candidate P / Candidate V : 20%
Party Three: Candidate Q / Candidate W : 45%
Candidate Q / Candidate W would win, even if Parties One and Two had nominated the same slate of electors.
On the flip side, New York allows for fusion of electoral slates and this usually happens for the major party candidates. It didn’t happen for Gary Johnson in 2016 though; there were separate slates from both the Libertarian Party and the Independence Party.
