As we near the end of an extremely divisive and polarizing election, it is a good time to look back and judge what were the ten most divisive and polarizing elections in American history.
Chronologically, they would be the following:
The Election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
The Election of 1828 between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson
The Election of 1860 between Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, John C. Breckinridge, and John Bell
The Election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden
The Election of 1884 between Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine
The Election of 1896 between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan
The Election of 1912 between Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Eugene Debs
The Election of 1948 between Harry Truman, Thomas E. Dewey, Strom Thurmond, and Henry A. Wallace
The Election of 1968 between Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace
The Election of 2000 between George W. Bush, Al Gore, Ralph Nader, and Pat Buchanan