Distribution of electoral college votes in the 1820 US presidential election

The 1820 United States presidential election saw incumbent President James Monroe run without any opposition from another major political party. This was only the third time that a candidate went virtually unopposed, with the other two times being in 1789 and 1792, as George Washington was elected unanimously on both occasions. In 1820, Monroe won 231 of 232 electoral college votes, as one vote was given to future-President, John Quincy Adams, by a faithless elector; which is an elector who does not give their vote to the candidate to whom they originally pledged they would (there were 7 faithless electors in the 2016 election). Until the 1820 election, the Federalist Party had always fielded an opponent to the Republican-Democratic Party's candidate, however their weaning popularity and the Republican-Democrat Party's dominance since 1800 meant they could not realistically field an opponent in the 1820 election. Despite winning all-but-one electoral vote, Monroe only managed to win 81 percent of the popular vote, with the majority of the other nineteen percent going to the Federalist Party, despite them not naming an opponent.