U.S. presidential election, 1872

United States presidential election, 1872

← 1868 November 5, 1872 1876 →
All 352 electoral votes of the Electoral College 177 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	71.3% 6.8 pp
Nominee Ulysses S. Grant Horace Greeley Party Republican Liberal Republican Home state Illinois New York Running mate Henry Wilson Benjamin G. Brown Electoral vote 286 3 (66 elected) States carried 31 6 Popular vote 3,598,235 2,834,761 Percentage 55.6% 43.8%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Grant/Wilson, steel blue denotes the three Georgia electoral votes won by Greeley, the other shades of blue denote those won by Hendricks, Brown, Jenkins, and Davis; this reflects the posthumous scattering of Greeley's electoral votes. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election Ulysses S. Grant Republican Elected President Ulysses S. Grant Republican

Ulysses S. Grant
Republican

Ulysses S. Grant
Republican

The United States presidential election of 1872 was the 22nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1872. The incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant was easily elected to a second term in office, with Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts as his running mate. Grant's decisive re-election was achieved in the face of a split within the Republican Party that resulted in a third party of Liberal Republicans nominating Horace Greeley to oppose Grant. This action caused the Democratic Party to cancel its convention, support Greeley as well, and not nominate a candidate of its own.

On November 29, 1872, after the popular vote was counted, but before the Electoral College cast its votes, Greeley died. As a result, electors previously committed to Greeley voted for four different candidates for president and eight different candidates for vice-president. Greeley himself received three posthumous electoral votes, but these votes were disallowed by Congress. The election of 1872 is the only United States presidential election in which a major party nominee died during the electoral process. It was the last instance until the 2016 presidential election in which more than one presidential elector voted for a candidate to which they were not pledged.