They either received at least one electoral vote from an elector who was not a faithless elector, or they received at least one percent of the national popular vote in an election held after the national popular vote began to be recorded in 1824.[2]
^The most recent elective office, or senior appointive position, held by the candidate when the presidential election was held. If the candidate had never held an elective office or senior appointive position at the time of the election, then their profession is listed.
^After the collapse of the Whig Party in the mid-1850s, the Republican Party and the American Party emerged as the major challengers to the Democratic Party. By 1856, neither the Republican nor the American Party had truly supplanted the Whig Party as the second major political party in the United States.[4] Nonetheless, the American Party is frequently described as a third party.[5][6][7] In 1856, the American Party, along with a rump convention of Whigs, nominated a presidential ticket led by former President Millard Fillmore.[8] After the 1856 election, the Republican Party firmly established itself as one of the two major parties alongside the Democratic Party, while the American Party collapsed.[9]
^The Democratic Party fractured along sectional lines in 1860 and held multiple national conventions. The Northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas and the Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge.[10][11] Many sources include Breckinridge as a third party candidate,[12][3][13] but other sources do not.[14][2]
Gienapp, William E. (1985). "Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War". The Journal of American History. 72 (3): 529–555. doi:10.2307/1904303. JSTOR1904303.
Hicks, John D. (1933). "The Third Party Tradition in American Politics". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 20 (1): 3–28. doi:10.2307/1902325. JSTOR1902325.
Rosenstone, Steven J.; Behr, Roy L.; Lazarus, Edward H. (2018). Third Parties in America: Citizen Response to Major Party Failure (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN9780691190525.