The lone vote against Monroe
In the 1820 presidential election, James Monroe faced no serious national rival. The Federalist Party, once the main opposition to his Democratic-Republican Party, had weakened sharply, and Monroe won 231 electoral votes. One elector, William Plumer of New Hampshire, cast his presidential vote for Secretary of State John Quincy Adams instead.
An electoral vote is a ballot cast by a state-appointed elector, rather than directly by a voter, under the system the Constitution uses to choose the president. Plumer’s vote did not come close to changing the outcome; Monroe had an overwhelming majority.
A unanimous result—with one exception
The result is often described as nearly unanimous, but it was not literally so. Plumer’s ballot left Monroe one vote short of every electoral vote cast. Popular explanations sometimes assign Plumer a particular motive, but the dependable point is simpler: he chose a different candidate, creating a striking exception to an otherwise lopsided victory.
The election took place during the period later nicknamed the “Era of Good Feelings,” when partisan competition appeared muted. That calm did not mean American politics had become permanently united. It meant that, in this contest, the opposition was too weak to make the presidency competitive. A single elector’s choice was enough to preserve the distinction between an overwhelming win and a unanimous one.
