14. Technically receiving zero electoral college votes as the Electors redistributed themselves after his death, Horace Greeley split from the Republican Party in an unsuccessful bid to oust President Grant
The founder and editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley briefly served as a Representative from New York between December 1848 and March 1949, filling the vacant seat of David Jackson who had been removed for fraud. Helping to found, and indeed name, the Republican Party in 1854, Greeley was an ardent abolitionist and opposed Andrew Johnson as a member of the radical wing of the party in the late-1860s. Splitting with President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870 as a result of the rampant corruption in his administration, Greeley was a founding member of the Liberal Republican Party, becoming its nominee in the presidential election two years later.
Supported by the Democratic Party, who declined to field their own candidate to ensure a united front was presented to defeat Grant’s re-election bid, Greeley faced an uphill battle. Grant remained extremely popular for his role in winning the Civil War, whilst Greeley was inexperienced and unfamiliar to many outside the New England elite. Campaigning poorly, Grant would become the last incumbent to win re-election until 1900, with a victory of thirty-one out of thirty-seven states. Dying prior to the meeting of the Electoral College, Greeley faced the further and posthumous shame of formally receiving zero electoral votes as Electors divided his winnings among other candidates.