1860 United States presidential election in Pennsylvania

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Fusion Nominee Abraham Lincoln John C. Breckinridge Stephen A. Douglas Party People's Fusion Alliance Democratic Southern Democratic Home state Illinois Kentucky(B) Illinois(D) Running mate Hannibal Hamlin Joseph Lane(B) Herschel V. Johnson(D) Electoral vote 27 0 Popular vote 268,030 178,871 Percentage 56.3% 37.5%

County results Lincoln   40–50%   50–60%   60–70%   70–80% Fusion   40–50%   50–60%   60–70%

President before election James Buchanan Democratic Elected President Abraham Lincoln Republican

Apresidential election was held inPennsylvania on November 6, 1860, as part of the1860 United States presidential election. ThePeople's ticket of the formerU.S. representative fromIllinois's 7th congressional district and the seniorU.S. senator fromMaineHannibal Hamlin defeated theFusion ticket nominated by thePennsylvania Democratic Party.

Lincoln was nominated by the1860 Republican National Convention and ran as the candidate of the People's Party in Pennsylvania.^[1] Formed in 1858, the party united Pennsylvania Republicans andKnow Nothings on aprotectionist platform that appealed toantislavery andnativist constituencies in both parties.^[2] The Pennsylvania Democratic party selected its state ticket in advance of the1860 Democratic National Conventions, which resulted in a split between the supporters ofStephen A. Douglas andJohn C. Breckinridge. The so-called "Reading ticket," named after thecity in Pennsylvania where the state convention met, was composed of 15 Breckenridge supporters and 12 Douglas supporters; the electors agreed to vote for whichever candidate stood the best chance of defeating Lincoln in the event thefusion ticket carried the state. A minority of Douglas Democrats in Pennsylvania opposed this arrangement and nominated their own ticket of 27 candidates, including the 12 Douglas electors on the Reading ticket.^[3] The split in the Democratic ranks effectively conceded the state to Lincoln, ending fears that the defection of protectionist voters to theConstitutional Union Party could cost Republicans the state's 27electoral votes.^[4]

Pennsylvania chose 27 electors on a statewidegeneral ticket. Nineteenth-century election laws required voters to elect each member of the Electoral College individually, rather than as a group. This sometimes resulted in small differences in the number of votes cast for electors pledged to the same presidential candidate, if some voters did not vote for all the electors nominated by a party.^[5]

Twelve candidates ran on both the Fusion ("Reading") and the "Straight" Douglas tickets; the official returns compiled by thesecretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania record the total number of votes for each candidate but do not include a full breakdown by ticket. Joseph Laubach won 194,834 votes as a Fusion–Douglas elector, the highest total for an candidate endorsed on both tickets.John Alexander Ahl received the most votes of any candidate nominated exclusively on the Reading ticket, and his statewide result is shown here as the best approximation of support for the Fusion electors. Similarly, the result shown for the "Straight" Douglas electors reflects the highest total for a candidate nominated exclusively on the Douglas ticket.^[3]

1860 United States presidential election in Pennsylvania^[6]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	People's	Abraham Lincoln Hannibal Hamlin	268,030	56.26	24.28
	Fusion	John C. Breckinridge Joseph Lane; Stephen A. Douglas Herschel V. Johnson	178,871	37.54	12.55
	Douglas Democratic	Stephen A. Douglas Herschel V. Johnson	16,765	3.52	3.52
	Constitutional Union	John Bell Edward Everett	12,770	2.68	2.68
Total votes			476,437	100.00

Pennsylvania voted for theRepublican candidate,Abraham Lincoln, over thefusion ticket. Lincoln won Pennsylvania by a margin of 18.72%. Lincoln's victory was the first of eighteen out of nineteen Republican victories in the state, as Pennsylvania would not vote Democratic again untilFranklin D. Roosevelt in1936, and would not vote for a different candidate again untilTheodore Roosevelt’s third-party bid in1912. Lincoln fashioned his victory in Pennsylvania out of Yankee and some Scots-Irish support.

Pennsylvania in the election was one of the four states that had a fusion ticket for the Democratic Party. The other three states wereNew Jersey,New York andRhode Island.

The 1860 presidential election in Pennsylvania began a trend in which the state would vote the same as nearbyMichigan in presidential elections, as the two states have voted for president in lockstep with each other on all but three occasions since Lincoln's victory –1932,1940, and1976.

• United States presidential elections in Pennsylvania

• Dubin, Michael J. (2002).United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company.ISBN 978-0-7864-6422-7.
• Foner, Eric (1995).Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-509497-8.
• Holt, Michael F. (2017).The Election of 1860: "A Campaign Fraught With Consequences". Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

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• United States presidential elections in Pennsylvania
• 1860 Pennsylvania elections

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