Talk:1860 United States presidential election

Inconsistent Popular Vote Totals

Currently, the article is home to three (four?) different sources for the popular vote throughout the text, none of which agree with eachother. The first and most important source cited — as it's the source for the infobox results and results section — is Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, which is currently dead link. As the Internet Archive is currently down, I’m unable to verify exactly what it originally said when it was added. The website does have an active page for 1860 but it provides a different total for the national vote.

As in the infobox/results section:

Lincoln - 1,865,908

Breckinridge - 848,019

John Bell - 590,901

Stephen Douglas - 1,380,202

"Other" - 531

But in the website cited it's:

Lincoln - 1,855,993

Breckinridge - 851,844

John Bell - 590,946

Stephen Douglas - 1,381,944

"Write-in" - 369

"-" - 171

Then there's Walter Dean Burnham's Presidential ballots, 1836–1892, which is stated as the referenced for the results by state section. In the book, on page 246, the national popular vote is listed as:

Lincoln - 1,865,693

Breckinridge - 848,356

John Bell - 692,906

Stephen Douglas - 1,382,713

No mention of other votes in the table.

Finally, there's Micheal J. Dubin's United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860: The Official Results by County and State, which is sprinkled throughout the results by state section and cited for the Liberty Party's vote in the nomination section. On page 159, the national popular vote totals are listed as:

Lincoln - 1,855,276

Breckinridge - 672,601

John Bell - 590,980

Stephen Douglas - 1,004,042

Fusion - 553,570

Union - 176

I would suggust using Dubin's vote totals exclusively because he cites his sources (something the Atlas does not), provides extensive detail with numerous notes, and is the only source to separate out the Fusion and Union votes which are already discussed separately in the article, as well as in the state election articles. Wowzers122 (talk) 03:38, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

The current popular vote data listed on this page are substantially different from this source,

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/1860

which is much closer to the results Eric Foner has published in his Lincoln Biography, The Fiery Trial.

I'll update the page to align with the ucsb.edu source if there are no objections. GibbsDuhem (talk) 13:04, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

@GibbsDuhem: I am of the opinion that we should keep the totals given by Micheal J. Dubin's United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860: The Official Results by County and State, which I had previously boldly updated the page to match. My concern with switching to the ucsb.edu source is that I don't see where the page is getting its information from, unlike the former. Additionally, the page seems to give all fusion ticket votes to Douglas in New York and New Jersey, and to Breckinridge in Pennsylvania. The source also doesn't list votes cast for Smith of the Liberty Party. Wowzers122 (talk) 15:18, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I do not have a copy of Dubin's references. Have you been able to trace any of them to primary sources? I suppose these might be very difficult to source, but Foner appears to be widely regarded as a historian of merit and his book, The Fiery Trial uses numbers much closer to ucsb's. I find it confusing, as you seemingly also have. Perhaps I'll have to read Dubin's work in search of alignment with your take on this. Being that I am most certainly an amateur history buff at best, I am loath to engage in an unagreed upon revision to this article. GibbsDuhem (talk) 22:54, 28 November 2024 (UTC)