The 1836 United States presidential election was the 13th quadrennial presidential election, held from Thursday, November 3 to Wednesday, December 7, 1836. In the third consecutive election victory for the Democratic Party, incumbent Vice President Martin Van Buren defeated four candidates fielded by the nascent Whig Party.
Results[]
Electoral vote[]
The Whigs' strategy narrowly failed to prevent Van Buren's election as president, though he earned a somewhat lower share of the popular vote and fewer electoral votes than Andrew Jackson had in either of the previous two elections. The key state in this election was Pennsylvania, which Van Buren won from William Henry Harrison with a narrow majority of just 4,222 votes. Had Harrison won the state, Van Buren would have been left eight votes short of an Electoral College majority, despite receiving a majority (50.48%) in the popular vote, and the Whig goal to force the election into the House of Representatives for a contingent election would have succeeded.
| Presidential candidate | Party | Home state | Popular vote | Electoral vote | Vice presidential candidate | Home state | Electoral vote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Percentage | |||||||
| Martin Van Buren | Democratic | New York | 764,176 | 50.83% | 170 | Richard Mentor Johnson | Kentucky | 147 |
| William Henry Harrison | Whig | Ohio | 550,816 | 36.63% | 73 | Francis Granger | New York | 77 |
| Daniel Webster | Whig | Massachusetts | 41,201 | 2.74% | 14 | |||
| Hugh Lawson White | Whig | Tennessee | 146,107 | 9.72% | 26 | John Tyler | Virginia | 47 |
| Willie Person Mangum | Whig | North Carolina | — | — | 11 | |||
| Others | 1,234 | 0.08% | 0 | Others | 23 | |||
| Total | 1,503,534 | 100.00% | 294 | Total | 294 | |||
| Needed to win | 148 | Needed to win | 148 | |||||
Contingent election[]
In an unusual turn of events, Virginia's 23 electors, who were all pledged to Van Buren and his running mate Richard Mentor Johnson, became faithless electors due to dissention related to Johnson's interracial relationship with a slave and refused to vote for Johnson, instead casting their vice presidential votes for former South Carolina Senator William Smith. This left Johnson one electoral vote short of an Electoral College majority, forcing a contingent election in the Senate decided between the top two vote recipients, Johnson and Francis Granger. Since no vice presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, for the first and, so far, only time in American history, the Senate decided a vice presidential race, selecting Democratic candidate Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky.
| Ballot | Candidate | Votes |
|---|---|---|
| 1st ballot | Richard Mentor Johnson | 33 |
| Francis Granger | 16 | |
| Not voting | 3 | |
| Total | 52 | |
| Needed to win | 27 | |
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