3. One of the most bizarre occurrences in American political history, the Whig Party put forward four separate and competing presidential tickets in the 1836 election, consequently losing to Democrat Martin Van Buren
Emerging in during the 1834 mid-term elections as the primary opposition to President Jackson and the Democratic Party, formed from members of the National Republican Party, Anti-Masonic Party, as well as the remnants of the Federalist Party and unhappy Democrats supportive of states’ rights, the fledgling Whigs approached the 1836 presidential election in nonsensical fashion. Rather than holding a national nominating convention, instead individual state conventions put forward their own candidates. Proposing four separate individuals – Tennessee Senator Hugh Lawson White, Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, South Carolina Senator William Person Mangum, and, by Pennsylvania, General William Henry Harrison – the party remained unable to come to an agreement.
As a result, the Whig Party inexplicably put forward competing tickets in the 1836 presidential election. Despite garnering 48.2 percent of the popular vote collectively, the endeavor was doomed to fail by dividing the spoils between the various candidatures. Whilst Harrison received the most electoral votes, carrying seven states and earning seventy-three electoral votes, White’s campaign took a further twenty-six, Webster fourteen, and Mangum eleven. Although not enough on their own to have won, the Whigs, who would win as a united party in 1840, were destined for failure given their insane strategy.