He was the plurality candidate. In that he received more votes than any other candidate (by a healthy margin).
He won the popular vote. Suggesting he wouldn't have been elected without the EC is simply false.
Election Results
On November 6, 1860, voters went to the ballot box to cast their vote for President of the United States. Lincoln won the election in an electoral college landslide with 180 electoral votes, although he secured less than 40 percent of the popular vote.
The North had many more people than the South and therefore control of the electoral college. Lincoln dominated the Northern states but didn’t carry a single Southern state.
Douglas received some Northern support—12 electoral votes—but not nearly enough to offer a serious challenge to Lincoln. The Southern vote was split between Breckenridge who won 72 electoral votes and Bell who won 39 electoral votes. The split prevented either candidate from gaining enough votes to win the election.
The election of 1860 firmly established the Democratic and Republican parties as the majority parties in the United States. It also confirmed deep-seated views on slavery and states’ rights between the North and South.
Before Lincoln’s inauguration, eleven Southern states had seceded from the Union. Weeks after his swearing-in, the Confederate Army fired on Fort Sumter and started the Civil War.
Sources
1860 Presidential General Election Results. David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.
Abraham Lincoln. Whitehouse.gov.
Constitutional Union Party. “No North, No South, No East, No West, Nothing but the Union.” National Park Service. U.S. Department of the Interior.
Constitutional Union Party. Texas State Historical Association.
Pre-Presidential Career 1830-1860. National Park Service. U.S. Department of the Interior.
Southern Democratic Party. Ohio History Central.
United States Presidential Election of 1860. Encyclopedia Virginia.
