Lincoln still wins by an extremely narrow Electoral College margin (only losing his 4 Electoral votes in New Jersey, and all electoral votes from California and Oregon compared to his real life performance), all while he loses the National Popular Vote by slightly more than 20%.
Even if the entire over 60% of voters who didn't vote for Lincoln all vote for the same candidate, Lincoln still wins.
That's insane. What a polarized election.
Yeah in this timeline where such a thing happens, people don't get to bitch about trump losing by 2.1 percent since that would be nothing in comparison
Well, a major factor in Lincoln not winning the popular vote in such a case is that he was not on the ballot in 10 states for completely arbitrary reasons, and slaves were barred from voting in any event. He could have won the popular vote if he was on the ballot in every state (including South Carolina actually having a direct popular vote and not picking electors in the state legislature) and if slaves were allowed to vote.
Wasn't the reason that Lincoln wasn't on the ballot in those states because no men could be found to serve as electors for him?
Yes, and I think the reason why that happened was recursively because many people would have had to be in fear of a potentially violent response. Also, if slaves could vote, then it would have been much easier for Lincoln to be on the ballot since it would be a very easy source of electors for him. He also probably would have won South Carolina and Mississippi outright since slaves were then a clear majority of those states populations.
