U.S. presidential election, 1864

United States presidential election, 1864

← 1860 November 8, 1864 1868 →
All 233 electoral votes of the Electoral College 117 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	73.8% 7.4 pp
Nominee Abraham Lincoln George B. McClellan Party National Union Democratic Home state Illinois New Jersey Running mate Andrew Johnson George H. Pendleton Electoral vote 212 21 States carried 22 (+2) 3 Popular vote 2,218,388 1,812,807 Percentage 55.0% 45.0%
Presidential election results map. light red denotes states won by Lincoln/Johnson, blue denotes those won by McClellan/Pendleton, and brown denotes Confederate states; two Confederate states (Louisiana and Tennessee) were controlled by the Union by 1864 and held elections (although their electors were not ultimately counted). Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election Abraham Lincoln Republican Elected President Abraham Lincoln National Union

Abraham Lincoln
Republican

Abraham Lincoln
National Union

The United States presidential election of 1864 was the 20th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1864. In this match, incumbent president Republican Abraham Lincoln ran for re-election against Democratic candidate George B. McClellan, who tried to portray himself to the voters as the "peace candidate" who wanted to bring the American Civil War to a speedy end. Lincoln was re-elected president by a landslide in the Electoral College.

Since the election of 1860, the Electoral College had expanded with the admission of Kansas, West Virginia, and Nevada as free-soil states. As the Civil War was still raging, no electoral votes were counted from any of the eleven southern states that had joined the Confederate States of America.

Lincoln won by more than 400,000 popular votes, partly as a result of the recent Union victory at the Battle of Atlanta and was the first president to be re-elected since Democrat Andrew Jackson in 1832. The second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln took place on March 4, 1865, but he was assassinated on April 15, 1865, only 42 days later. Lincoln's second term is the second shortest term served by any U.S. president, next to the 31-day presidency of William Henry Harrison.