1852 United States presidential election

For related races, see 1852 United States elections.

1852 United States presidential election

November 2, 1852
296 members of the Electoral College 149 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	69.5% 3.3 pp
Nominee Franklin Pierce Winfield Scott Party Democratic Whig Alliance Southern Rights Home state New Hampshire New Jersey Running mate William R. King William A. Graham Electoral vote 254 42 States carried 27 4 Popular vote 1,604,167 1,385,255 Percentage 50.8% 43.9%
Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Pierce/King and Yellow by Scott/Graham. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes cast by each state.
President before election Millard Fillmore Whig Elected President Franklin Pierce Democratic

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1852. Democratic nominee Franklin Pierce defeated Whig nominee General Winfield Scott.

Incumbent Whig President Millard Fillmore had succeeded to the presidency in 1850 upon the death of President Zachary Taylor. Fillmore endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and enforced the Fugitive Slave Law. This earned Fillmore Southern voter support and Northern voter opposition. On the 53rd ballot of the sectionally divided 1852 Whig National Convention, Scott defeated Fillmore for the nomination. Democrats divided among four major candidates at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. On the 49th ballot, dark horse candidate Franklin Pierce won nomination by consensus compromise. The Free Soil Party, a third party opposed to the extension of slavery in the United States and into the territories, nominated New Hampshire Senator John P. Hale.

With few policy differences between the two major candidates, the election became a personality contest. Though Scott had commanded in the Mexican–American War, Pierce also served. Scott strained Whig Party unity as his anti-slavery reputation gravely damaged his campaign in the South. A group of Southern Whigs and a separate group of Southern Democrats each nominated insurgent tickets, but both efforts failed to attract support.

Pierce and running mate William R. King won a comfortable popular majority, carrying 27 of the 31 states. Pierce won the highest share of the electoral vote since James Monroe's uncontested 1820 re-election. The Free Soil Party regressed to less than five percent of the national popular vote, down from more than ten percent in 1848, while overwhelming defeat and disagreement about slavery soon drove the Whig Party to disintegrate. Anti-slavery Whigs and Free Soilers would ultimately coalesce into the new Republican Party, which would quickly become a formidable movement in the free states.

Not until 1876 would Democrats again win a majority of the popular vote for president, and not until 1932 would they win a majority in both the popular vote and the electoral college.

Nominations

Democratic Party nomination

Main article: 1852 Democratic National Convention

1852 Democratic Party ticket
Franklin Pierce	William R. King
for President	for Vice President
U.S. senator from New Hampshire (1837–1842)	U.S. senator from Alabama (1819–1844 & 1848–1852)

• Franklin Pierce, former U.S. senator from New Hampshire
• Lewis Cass, U.S. senator from Michigan
• James Buchanan, former U.S. secretary of state from Pennsylvania
• William L. Marcy, former U.S. secretary of war from New York
• Stephen A. Douglas, U.S. senator from Illinois

• 
  Former senator
  Franklin Pierce
  from New Hampshire
• 
  Senator
  Lewis Cass
  from Michigan
• 
  Former Secretary
  of State
  James Buchanan
• 
  Former Secretary
  of War
  William L. Marcy
• 
  Senator
  Stephen A. Douglas
  from Illinois

Pierce/King campaign poster

The Democratic Party held its national convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in June 1852. Benjamin F. Hallett, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, limited the sizes of the delegations to their electoral votes and a vote to maintain the two-thirds requirement for the presidential and vice-presidential nomination was passed by a vote of 269 to 13.

James Buchanan, Lewis Cass, William L. Marcy, and Stephen A. Douglas were the main candidates for the nomination. All of the candidates led the ballot for the presidential nomination at one point, but all of them failed to meet the two-thirds requirement. Franklin Pierce was put up for the nomination by the Virginia delegation. Pierce won the nomination when the delegates switched their support to him after he had received the unanimous support of the delegates from New England. He won on the second day of balloting after forty-nine ballots.

The delegation from Maine proposed that the vice-presidential nomination should be given to somebody from the Southern United States with William R. King being specifically named. King led on the first ballot before winning on the second ballot.

Whig Party nomination

Main article: 1852 Whig National Convention

1852 Whig Party ticket
Winfield Scott	William A. Graham
for President	for Vice President
3rd Commanding General of the U.S. Army (1841–1861)	20th U.S. Secretary of the Navy (1850–1852)

Millard Fillmore, the incumbent president in 1852, whose term expired on March 4, 1853

• Winfield Scott, commanding general of the U.S. Army from New Jersey
• Millard Fillmore, president of the United States from New York
• Daniel Webster, U.S. secretary of state from Massachusetts

• 
  Commanding General
  Winfield Scott
• 
  President
  Millard Fillmore
• 
  U.S. Secretary of State
  Daniel Webster

Scott/Graham campaign poster

The Whig Party held its national convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in June 1852. The call for the convention had been made by Whig members of the United States Congress and thirty-one states were represented. A vote to have each state's vote be based on its electoral college strength was passed by a vote of 149 to 144, but it was rescinded due to disagreements from the Southern states and smaller Northern states.

The party had been divided by the Compromise of 1850 and was divided over the presidential nomination between incumbent president Millard Fillmore, who received support from the South, and Winfield Scott, who received his support from the North. William H. Seward, who had been the main opponent of the compromise in the United States Senate and advised President Zachary Taylor against it, supported Scott. Fillmore offered to give his delegates to Daniel Webster if he received the support of forty-one delegates on his own, but Webster was unsuccessful. Scott won the nomination on the 53rd ballot. William Alexander Graham won the vice-presidential nomination without a formal vote.

Nine southern Whig members of Congress, including Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs, refused to support Scott.

Free Soil Party nomination

Main article: Free Soil Party

• John P. Hale, U.S. senator from New Hampshire

• 
  Senator John P. Hale
  from New Hampshire

The Free Soil Party was still the strongest third party in 1852. However, following the Compromise of 1850, most of the "Barnburners" who supported it in 1848 had returned to the Democratic Party while most of the Conscience Whigs rejoined the Whig Party. The second Free Soil National Convention assembled in the Masonic Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. New Hampshire senator John P. Hale was nominated for president with 192 delegate votes (sixteen votes were cast for a smattering of candidates). George W. Julian of Indiana was nominated for vice president over Samuel Lewis of Ohio and Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio.

Independent Whig nomination

• 
  Secretary of State
  Daniel Webster
  from Massachusetts
• 
  Former Attorney General of Georgia
  Charles J. Jenkins
  from Georgia

The movement to nominate Daniel Webster among Whigs as an independent candidate began in earnest in Boston following the Whig National Convention. It was largely driven by those who had strongly opposed the nomination of Scott for president, most notably George Ticknor Curtis, a controversial fugitive slave commissioner. These men had grown tired of military chieftains at the top of the Whig ticket and argued that the party had fallen under the control of dangerous foes of the compromise. They lacked political experience and had little to lose.

Those who had stuck with him throughout the nomination season, Everett, Choate, Ashmun, Harvey, Edward Curtis, Moses Grinnell, and others, knew that an independent run was hopeless. They feared that his candidacy as a third-party candidate would not only hurt the Whigs, but also tarnish his legacy as the great "Defender of the Constitution".

While Webster was opposed to what he perceived as a revolt from the Whig Party and preferred not to be nominated, he told Curtis that he could not prevent anyone from voting for him. Privately, however, he was convinced that the Whig party was disintegrating and that endorsing its ticket would be both futile and demeaning. In fact, he held a favorable view of Pierce and advised his assistant, Charles Lanman, along with Peter Harvey, to vote for him. After this, Webster ceased commenting on the independent movement. At that point, the movement had only spread to New York, but it would later receive support from Unionists in the South.

Union Party nomination

• 
  Secretary of State
  Daniel Webster
  from Massachusetts
• 
  Former Attorney General of Georgia
  Charles J. Jenkins
  from Georgia

The Union Party, known as the Constitutional Union Party in the state of Georgia, was a political party organized in several slave states to support the Compromise of 1850. It was one of two major parties in the states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi in the early 1850s, alongside the Southern Rights Party. Following the acquiescence of the Southern Rights leaders to the Compromise after 1851, the need for a dedicated Union party diminished. Many Whigs who had supported the Union Party movement subsequently joined the Democratic Party; most Unionist Democrats returned to their former political allegiance.

The Constitutional Union Party had formed as a merger of the local Democratic and Whig parties. While former Whigs in the party were given important positions, such as senate seats, the party's executive committee was made up of mostly Democrats. By this point, the local Southern Rights Party had been defeated in all major races. With a supermajority in the state legislature, the Union Party began its program of division of the political spoils, which eventually led to a split between the "Union Democrats" and "Union Whigs" factions.

As the 1852 presidential election approached, Constitutional Union Party leaders decided to wait and see who would be nominated by the two major parties. In April, the Union Democrats held a convention where they nominated delegates to the national Democratic convention. Later that summer, Union Whigs held a convention where they sent a delegation led by William C. Dawson to the national Whig convention, instructing them to work towards the nomination of Millard Fillmore. These separate conventions laid the groundwork for the party's eventual collapse, providing Union Democrats with an excuse to return to the Democratic fold.

At the subsequent Constitutional Union convention on July 15, the dominant Union Democrats were able to nominate a Pierce electoral ticket, causing anti-Democratic Union Whigs to walk out of the convention. These dissenting Whigs, who feared that Scott would repudiate the compromise, hoped to absorb Scott Whig strenght by endorsing the national Whig platform and then nominate Webster and throw the election into the House of Representatives, which they proceeded to do at a convention in Macon with Charles J. Jenkins as his vice-president. Simultaneously, the Scott Whigs held a convention in Macon, but the fusion of the two groups failed to occur. Following these conventions, the Democratic majority on the Constitutional Union Party's executive committee declared the party dissolved and withdrew the convention Pierce ticket.

In Massachusetts, encouraged by the Georgia convention, Curtis and his followers held a convention at Faneuil Hall in Boston on September 15, endorsing the nominations made by the Unionist convention in Georgia. However, in early September, Webster, until this point an active and mostly healthy man, went into serious decline. During his final days, his friends attempted to get him to denounce the independent movement. This stopped after Abbot, who had initially favored a formal statement of party loyalty, concluded that it was unfair for them to pressure a dying man who had lost all interest in politics. Seeing how useless and unfair it was to bother him further, Curtis, on October 21, ordered the Webster Executive Committee in Boston to suspend activities. Webster died nine days before the election of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 24, 1852.

Native American (Know-Nothing) Party nomination

Around the mid-1830s, nativists were present in New York politics, under the aegis of the American Republican Party. The American Republican party was formed in 1843 in major opposition to Catholicism and Catholic immigrants. In 1845, the party changed its name to the Native American Party. Their opponents nicknamed them the "Know Nothings". The party liked the name, and it became the official nickname of the party until it collapsed in 1860. In 1852, the original presidential nominee planned by the Native American Party was Daniel Webster, the presidential nominee of the Union Party. They nominated Webster without his permission, with George C. Washington (grandnephew of George Washington) as his vice presidential running mate. Webster died of natural causes nine days before the election, and the Know-Nothings quickly replaced Webster by nominating Jacob Broom for president and replaced Washington with Reynell Coates for vice president. In the future, former president Millard Fillmore would be their presidential nominee in 1856.

Southern Rights Party nomination

The Southern Rights Party was a political party organized in several slave states to oppose the Compromise of 1850, viewing it as inadequate protection for the South, and advocate for secession from the Union, though it later abandoned serious plans for secession. It was one of two major parties in the states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi in the early 1850s, alongside the Union Party. The party was made up of mostly Democrats and State Rights Whigs. By 1851, most Southern Rights Democrats had acquiesced to the compromise, believing further opposition to it was hopeless.

It was unclear in early 1852 if the remnants of the party would contest the presidential election. When the Southern Rights Convention of Alabama in Montgomery was held in early March, only six counties were represented. The convention voted to keep the party alive throughout the southern states to oppose both the Democrats and Whigs, or cooperate with either based on the extent to which their doctrines aligned with the principles of the Southern Rights men. In most states, the party was too disorganized to nominate its own candidate and have an effect on the election. The South Carolinian Southern Standard argued that the Southern Rights parties should coordinate and attempt to influence the Democratic nomination, though not by joining the Democratic convention, as that might obligate them to support an unfavorable candidate. Instead, the paper proposed holding a parallel convention at the same time and place, so they could be "prepared to act as circumstances might require".

Southern Rights Party of Alabama nomination

• George Troup, former U.S. senator from Georgia

• 
  Former senator George Troup
  from Georgia

After the Democratic National Convention, the party was not sure that it wanted to support Franklin Pierce and William R. King, the Democratic nominees. Another Southern Rights Convention was held in Montgomery from July 13–15 and debated at length whether to keep up a separate organization and whether they wanted to nominate Pierce.

The convention was unable to arrive at a decision, deciding to appoint a committee to review the positions of Scott/Graham and Pierce/King, with the option of calling a "national" convention if the two major-party tickets appeared deficient. The committee took its time reviewing the positions of Pierce and Scott, finally deciding on August 25 to call a convention for a Southern Rights Party ticket. Pierce had failed to answer their inquiry and on August 27 it was reported that Scort replied to the letter of the Alabama Southern Rights Central Committee, but declined giving specitic answers to their interrogatories.

The convention assembled in Montgomery, Alabama, with 62 delegates present, a committee to recommend a ticket being appointed while the delegates listened to speeches in the interim. The committee eventually recommended former senator George Troup of Georgia for president, and former governor John Quitman of Mississippi for vice president; they were unanimously nominated.

The two nominees accepted their nominations soon after the convention, which was held rather late in the season. Troup stated in a letter, dated September 27 and printed in the New York Times on October 16, that he had planned to vote for Pierce/King and had always wholeheartedly supported William R.D. King. He indicated in the letter that he preferred to decline the honor, as he was rather ill at the time and feared that he would die before the election. The state party's executive committee edited the letter to excise those portions which indicated that Troup preferred to decline, a fact which was revealed after the election.

Southern Rights Party of Georgia nomination

• 
  Former senator
  Franklin Pierce
  from New Hampshire
• 
  Former Secretary
  of State
  James Buchanan

Seeking to gain favor of the successful national party, whom would most likely be the Democrats, the Resistance Party, as the Georgian branch was known, changed its name to the Southern Rights Party and held a convention on March 31, 1852. At this convention, it nominated delegates to the national Democratic convention and an electoral ticket headed by Herschel V. Johnson and Wilson Lumpkin. These men were instructed to show no preference for any particular candidate, although a large majority of the convention that nominated them supported Buchanan as their first choice.

In April, the Democrats in the Constitutional Union Party had held a convention where they nominated delegates to the national Democratic convention. Both groups were seated. Following the dissolution of the Constitutional Union Party, Georgia Democrats and the Southern Rights Party met in a joint convention and attempted to consolidate support for Pierce in a combined Southern Rights-Democratic ticket.

Independent Democratic nomination

• 
  Former senator Franklin Pierce
  from New Hampshire

A remnant group of Union Democrats in the vicinity of Athens, Georgia, with the tacit consent of Governor Howell Cobb, refused to support the Southern Rights-backed Pierce ticket. Instead, they ran their own Independent Democratic Pierce ticket in opposition.

Liberty Party nomination

The Liberty Party had ceased to become a significant political force after most of its members joined the Free Soil Party in 1848. Nonetheless, some of those who rejected the fusion strategy held a Liberty Party National Convention in Buffalo, New York. There were few delegates present, so a ticket was recommended and a later convention called. The Convention recommended Gerrit Smith of New York for president and Charles Durkee of Wisconsin for vice president. A second convention was held in Syracuse, New York, in early September 1852, but it too failed to draw enough delegates to select nominees. Yet a third convention gathered in Syracuse later that month and nominated William Goodell of New York for president and S.M. Bell of Virginia for vice president. A slate of electors pledged to Smith received 72 votes in New York.

General election

Fall campaign

Political cartoon favoring Winfield Scott

The Whigs' platform was almost indistinguishable from that of the Democrats, reducing the campaign to a contest between the personalities of the two candidates. The lack of clearcut issues between the two parties helped drive voter turnout down to its lowest level since 1836. The decline was further exacerbated by Scott's antislavery reputation, which decimated the Southern Whig vote at the same time as the pro-slavery Whig platform undermined the Northern Whig vote. After the Compromise of 1850 was passed, many of the southern Whig Party members broke with the party's key figure, Henry Clay.

Finally, Scott's status as a war hero was somewhat offset by the fact that Pierce was himself a Mexican–American War brigadier general.

The Democrats adopted the slogan: The Whigs we Polked in forty-four, We'll Pierce in fifty-two, playing on the names of Pierce and former president James K. Polk.

Just nine days before the election, Webster died, causing many Union state parties to remove their slates of electors. The Union ticket appeared on the ballot in Georgia and Massachusetts, however.

Results

Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage of the winning candidate in each county. Shades of blue are for Pierce (Democratic), shades of yellow are for Scott (Whig), shades of red are for Hale (Free Soil), shades of orange are for Webster (Union), shades of green are for (Independent Democrats), and shades of purple are for Troup (Southern Rights).

27.3% of the voting age population and 69.5% of eligible voters participated in the election. When American voters went to the polls, Pierce won the electoral college in a landslide; Scott won only the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Vermont, while the Free Soil vote collapsed to less than half of what Martin Van Buren had earned in the previous election, with the party taking no states. The fact that Daniel Webster received a substantial share of the vote in Georgia and Massachusetts, even though he was dead, shows how disenchanted voters were with the two main candidates.

In the popular vote, while Pierce outpolled Scott by 220,000 votes, 17 states were decided by less than 10%, and eight by less than 5%. A shift of 69,000 votes to Scott in Delaware, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania would have left the electoral college in a 148–148 tie, forcing a contingent election in the House of Representatives.

As a result of the devastating defeat and the growing tensions within the party between pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery Northerners, the Whig Party quickly fell apart after the 1852 election and ceased to exist. Some Southern Whigs would join the Democratic Party, and many Northern Whigs would help to form the new Republican Party in 1854.

Some Whigs in both sections would support the so-called "Know-Nothing" party in the 1856 presidential election. Similarly, the Free Soil Party rapidly fell away into obscurity after the election, and the remaining members mostly opted to join the former Northern Whigs in forming the Republican Party.

The Southern Rights Party effectively collapsed following the election, attaining only five percent of the vote in Alabama, and a few hundred in its nominee's home state of Georgia. It would elect a number of Congressmen in 1853, but they would rejoin the Democratic Party upon taking their seats in Congress.

Kentucky and Tennessee were the only slave states that Scott won. None of the future Confederate states elected governors in the 1852 and 1853 gubernatorial elections and the Whigs only won 14 of the south's 65 seats in the U.S. House. The party held no state legislatures in the south except for in Tennessee. The Democrats, who carried all but two northern states, would see a decline in the north following the 1854 elections due to controversy around the Kansas–Nebraska Act. They lost control of all free state legislatures except for two and their seats in the U.S. House from the north fell from 93 to 23.

Electoral results

Presidential candidate	Party	Home state	Popular vote		Electoral vote	Running mate
			Count	Percentage		Vice-presidential candidate	Home state	Electoral vote
Franklin Pierce	Democratic Southern Rights (Georgia)	New Hampshire	1,598,363	50.63%	254	William R. King	Alabama	254
Winfield Scott	Whig	New Jersey	1,385,255	43.88%	42	William Alexander Graham	North Carolina	42
John P. Hale	Free Soil	New Hampshire	155,441	4.92%	0	George Washington Julian	Indiana	0
Daniel Webster	Union Independent Whigs	Massachusetts	7,378	0.23%	0	Charles J. Jenkins	Georgia	0
Franklin Pierce (Anti-SRP ticket)	Independent Democratic	New Hampshire	5,804	0.18%	0	William R. King	Alabama	0
Jacob Broom	Native American	Pennsylvania	2,415	0.08%	0	Reynell Coates	New Jersey	0
George Troup	Southern Rights	Georgia	2,205	0.07%	0	John A. Quitman	Mississippi	0
Gerrit Smith	Liberty Party	New York	72	0.002%	0	Charles Durkee	Wisconsin	0
Total			3,156,800	100%	296			296
Needed to win					149			149

Source (Popular Vote): Dubin, Michael J. United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860 pp 115-134 Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved July 31, 2005.

• The leading candidates for vice president were both born in North Carolina and in fact both attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, albeit two decades apart. While there, they were members of opposing debate societies: the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies. Both also served in North Carolina politics: King was a representative from North Carolina before he moved to Alabama, and Graham was a governor of North Carolina.

Popular vote Pierce   50.82% Scott   43.88% Hale   4.92% Others   0.56%

Electoral vote Pierce   85.81% Scott   14.19%

Records

This was the last election in which the Democrats won Michigan until 1932, the last in which the Democrats won Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio or Rhode Island until 1912, the last in which the Democrats won Wisconsin until 1892, the last in which the Democrats won Connecticut until 1876 and the last in which the Democrats won New York until 1868. It was, however, the last election in which the Democrats' chief opponent won Kentucky until 1896, and the last until 1928 in which the Democrats' opponent obtained an absolute majority in Kentucky.

Geography of results

Cartographic gallery

• 
  Map of presidential election results by county
• 
  Map of Democratic presidential election results by county
• 
  Map of Whig presidential election results by county
• 
  Map of Free Soil presidential election results by county
• 
  Map of "Other" presidential election results by county

Results by state

Source: Data from Dubin, Michael J. United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860 pp 115-134 with differences with Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57 noted.

States/districts won by Pierce/King

States/districts won by Scott/Graham

		Franklin Pierce Democratic			Winfield Scott Whig			John P. Hale Free Soil			Others			Margin		State Total
State	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	#
Alabama	9	0001361826,881	60.89	9	0004866915,061	34.12	-	no ballots			000486692,205	4.99	-	11,820	26.77	44,147	AL
Arkansas	4	12,179	62.11	4	7,430	24.22	-	no ballots			no ballots			4,749	24.36	19,609	AR
California	4	40,585	53.12	4	35,752	46.79	-	62	0.09	-	56		-	4,833	6.33	76,337	CA
Connecticut	6	33,249	49.79	6	30,359	45.56	-	3,161	4.73	-	no ballots			2,890	4.23	66,769	CT
Delaware	3	6,330	49.87	3	6,299	49.63	-	63	0.50	-	no ballots			31	0.24	12,692	DE
Florida	3	4,318	60.03	3	2,875	39.97	-	no ballots			no ballots			1,443	20.06	7,193	FL
Georgia	10	34,708	55.56	10	16,639	26.63	-	no ballots			11,125	17.81	-	18,069	28.93	62,472	GA
Illinois	11	80,368	51.86	11	64,733	41.77	-	9,863	6.36	-	no ballots			15,635	10.09	154,964	IL
Indiana	13	94,890	51.93	13	80,901	44.28	-	6,928	3.79	-	no ballots			13,989	7.65	182,719	IN
Iowa	4	17,824	50.02	4	16,195	45.45	-	1,612	4.52	-	no ballots			1,629	4.57	35,631	IA
Kentucky	12	53,807	48.40	-	57,108	51.37	12	256	0.23	-	no ballots			-3,301	-2.97	111,171	KY
Louisiana	6	18,653	51.95	6	17,255	48.05	-	no ballots			no ballots			1,398	3.90	35,908	LA
Maine	8	41,609	50.63	8	32,543	39.60	-	8,030	9.77	-	no ballots			9,066	11.03	82,182	ME
Maryland	8	40,428	53.50	8	35,080	46.42	-	56	0.07	-	no ballots			5,348	7.08	75,564	MD
Massachusetts	13	45,875	35.72	-	52,863	41.16	13	28,023	21.82	-	1,670	1.30	-	-6,988	-5.44	128,431	MA
Michigan	6	41,842	50.45	6	33,860	40.83	-	7,237	8.73	-	no ballots			7,982	9.62	82,939	MI
Mississippi	7	26,110	60.89	7	16,773	39.11	-	no ballots			no ballots			9,337	21.78	42,883	MS
Missouri	9	38,610	56.32	9	29,947	43.68	-	no ballots			no ballots			8,663	12.64	68,557	MO
New Hampshire	5	28,503	56.40	5	15,486	30.64	-	6,546	12.95	-	no ballots			13,017	25.76	50,535	NH
New Jersey	7	44,301	52.79	7	38,551	45.93	-	336	0.40	-	738	0.88	-	5,750	6.86	83,926	NJ
New York	35	262,083	50.12	35	234,896	44.92	-	25,435	4.86	-	459	0.08	-	27,187	5.20	522,873	NY
North Carolina	10	39,784	50.39	10	39,108	49.53	-	59	0.07	-	no ballots			676	0.86	78,951	NC
Ohio	23	169,190	47.94	23	152,577	43.24	-	31,133	8.82	-	no ballots			16,613	4.70	352,900	OH
Pennsylvania	27	198,591	51.17	27	179,216	46.18	-	8,596	2.22	-	1,677	0.43	-	19,375	4.99	388,080	PA
Rhode Island	4	8,735	51.37	4	7,626	44.85	-	644	3.79	-	no ballots			1,109	6.52	17,005	RI
South Carolina	8	no popular vote		8	no popular vote			no popular vote			no popular vote			-	-	-	SC
Tennessee	12	57,056	49.27	-	58,807	50.73	12	no ballots			no ballots			-1,751	-1.46	115,863	TN
Texas	4	11,519	73.34	4	4,187	26.66	-	no ballots			no ballots			7,332	46.68	15,706	TX
Vermont	5	13,044	29.77	-	22,156	50.56	5	8,621	19.67	-	no ballots			-9,112	-20.79	43,821	VT
Virginia	15	73,833	55.70	15	58,732	44.30	-	no ballots			no ballots			15,101	11.40	132,565	VA
Wisconsin	5	33,658	52.04	5	22,240	34.34	-	8,842	13.63	-	11,448	17.70	64,682	WI
TOTALS:	296	1,598,363	50.82	254	1,385,255	43.88	42	155,441	4.92	-	17,741	0.56	-			3,156,800	the US
TO WIN:	149

States that flipped from Whig to Democratic

• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Georgia
• Florida
• Louisiana
• Maryland
• New Jersey
• New York
• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island

Close states

States where the margin of victory was under 1%:

1. Delaware 0.24% (31 votes)
2. North Carolina 0.86% (676 votes)

States where the margin of victory was under 5%:

1. Tennessee 1.46% (1,751 votes)
2. Kentucky 2.97% (3,301 votes)
3. Louisiana 3.90% (1,398 votes)
4. Connecticut 4.23% (2,890 votes)
5. Iowa 4.57% (1,629 votes)
6. Ohio 4.70% (16,613 votes)
7. Pennsylvania 4.99% (19,375 votes)

States where the margin of victory was under 10%:

1. New York 5.20% (27,187 votes) (tipping point state)
2. Massachusetts 5.44% (6,988 votes)
3. California 6.33% (4,833 votes)
4. Rhode Island 6.52% (1,109 votes)
5. New Jersey 6.86% (5,750 votes)
6. Maryland 7.08% (5,348 votes)
7. Indiana 7.65% (13,989 votes)
8. Michigan 9.62% (7,982 votes)

Electoral college selection

Method of choosing electors	State(s)
Each Elector appointed by state legislature	South Carolina
Each Elector chosen by voters statewide	(all other States)

See also

• History of the United States (1849–65)
• Inauguration of Franklin Pierce
• Second Party System
• 1852–53 United States House of Representatives elections
• 1852–53 United States Senate elections

Works cited

• Abramson, Paul; Aldrich, John; Rohde, David (1995). Change and Continuity in the 1992 Elections. CQ Press. ISBN 0871878399.
• McPherson, James (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195038637.

Further reading

• Blue, Frederick J. The Free Soilers: Third-Party Politics, 1848-54 (U of Illinois Press, 1973).
• Chambers, William N., and Philip C. Davis. "Party, Competition, and Mass Participation: The Case of the Democratizing Party System, 1824–1852." in The history of American electoral behavior (Princeton University Press, reprinted 2015) pp. 174–197.
• Foner, Eric. "Politics and prejudice: The Free Soil party and the Negro, 1849–1852." Journal of Negro History 50.4 (1965): 239–256. online
• Gara, Larry. The Presidency of Franklin Pierce (UP of Kansas, 1991).
• Gienapp, William E. The origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (Oxford UP, 1987).
• Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. (Oxford University Press, 1999).
• Holt, Michael F. Franklin Pierce: The American Presidents Series: The 14th President, 1853-1857 (Macmillan, 2010).
• Marshall, Schuyler C. "The Free Democratic Convention of 1852." Pennsylvania History 22.2 (1955): 146–167. online
• Morrison, Michael A. "The Election of 1852." American Presidential Campaigns and Elections (Routledge, 2020) pp. 349–366.
• Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: A house dividing, 1852–1857. Vol. 2 (1947) pp 3–42.
• Nichols, Roy Franklin. The Democratic Machine, 1850–1854 (1923) online
• Riddle, Wesley Allen. "Unrestraint Begets Calamity: The American Whig Review, 1845–1852." Humanitas 11.2 (1998). online
• Wilentz, Sean. The rise of American democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2006) pp 659–667.

States

• Baum, Dale. "Know-Nothingism and the Republican majority in Massachusetts: The political realignment of the 1850s." Journal of American History 64.4 (1978): 959–986. online
• Beeler, Dale. "The Election of 1852 in Indiana." Indiana Magazine of History (1915): 301–323. online
• Campbell, Randolph. "The Whig Party of Texas in the Elections of 1848 and 1852." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73.1 (1969): 17–34. online
• Huston, James L. "The Illinois Political Realignment of 1844–1860: Revisiting the Analysis." Journal of the Civil War Era 1.4 (2011): 506–535. online
• Morrill, James R. "The Presidential Election of 1852: Death Knell of the Whig Party of North Carolina." North Carolina Historical Review 44.4 (1967): 342–359 online.
• Rosenberg, Morton M. "The Iowa Elections of 1852." Annals of Iowa 38.4 (1966). online
• Solomon, Irvin D. "The Grass Roots Appearance of a National Party: The Formation of the Republican Party in Erie, Pennsylvania, 1852–1856." Western Pennsylvania History (1983): 209–222. online
• Sweeney, Kevin. "Rum, Romanism, Representation, and Reform: Coalition Politics in Massachusetts, 1847–1853." Civil War History 22.2 (1976): 116–137.
• Walton, Brian G. "Arkansas Politics during the Compromise Crisis, 1848–1852." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 36.4 (1977): 307–337. online

Primary sources

• Chester, Edward W A guide to political platforms (1977) online
• Porter, Kirk H. and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds. National party platforms, 1840-1964 (1965) online 1840-1956

Web sites

• "A Historical Analysis of the Electoral College". The Green Papers. Retrieved September 17, 2005.

External links

• Presidential Election of 1852: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress
• 1852 popular vote by counties
• 1852 state-by-state popular vote Archived May 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
• Election of 1852 in Counting the Votes Archived October 23, 2017, at the Wayback Machine