Distribution of votes in the 1872 US presidential election

The 1872 US election was contested between incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant of the Republican Party, and the Liberal Republican Party's Horace Greeley. A split in the Republican Party (by those who opposed Grant's Reconstruction policies) led to the formation of the Liberal Republican Party, and with no obvious candidate of their own, the Democratic Party threw their support behind Greeley in an attempt to defeat Grant.

Results

Greeley, who had managed to unite the Democratic party with anti-Grant Republicans, proved to be an ineffective campaigner, and won only six states. President Grant received more than 55 percent of the popular vote, carrying 29 out of 35 states, and receiving over eighty percent of the electoral votes. Grant also proved popular in many of the southern states, with whom he had fought against in the American Civil War. Grant's popular vote margin of twelve percent was also the largest winning margin of any presidential election between 1852 and 1904.

Historical significance

The election is mostly remembered as the only occasion where a candidate died during the election process. The popular vote was held on November 5, however, before the electors could convene and submit their electoral votes, Greeley died on November 29. Because of this, electors who had pledged their votes to Greeley eventually split their votes between four other candidates, and this was the last time until 2016 where multiple electors voted for a candidate to whom they were not pledged. The candidate who received the largest share of Greeley's electoral votes was not his running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown, but rather the future Vice President, Thomas A. Hendricks.