Jackson won renomination with no opposition, and the 1832 Democratic National Convention replaced Vice President John C. Calhoun with Martin Van Buren.

The National Republican Convention nominated a ticket led by Clay, a Kentuckian who had served as Secretary of State under President John Quincy Adams.

Calhoun further aggravated Jackson in the summer of 1831 when he issued his "Fort Hill Letter," in which he outlined the constitutional basis for a state's ability to nullify an act of Congress.

Martin Van Buren was nominated for vice president on the first ballot, receiving 208 votes to 49 for Philip P. Barbour and 26 for Richard Mentor Johnson.

A prominent Philadelphia attorney with connections to the Second Bank of the United States and a reputation as an opponent of slavery, Sergeant gave the ticket geographical balance.

[citation needed] While the South Carolina state legislature remained nominally under Democratic control, it refused to support Jackson's reelection due to the ongoing Nullification Crisis, and instead opted to back a ticket proposed by the Nullifier Party led by John C. Calhoun.

Calhoun himself declined to head the ticket, instead nominating Governor of Virginia John Floyd, who also opposed Jackson's stance on states' rights.

[14] Jackson rode into office in 1828 on the strength of a coalition that included southern opponents of the Tariff of 1828, western advocates of internal improvements, many former Democratic-Republicans, and some former Federalists.

He persuaded the president of the bank, Nicholas Biddle, to request recharter a full four years early in order to coincide with the presidential election.

Clay predicted the president's hostility to the nationalist economic program would prove unpopular with voters, particularly in Pennsylvania where the bank was headquartered, and hand the Anti-Jacksonians victory at the polls.

These southerners objected strongly to the tariff and argued for the right of the states to nullify unfriendly federal laws, a position Jackson refused to endorse.

Clay hoped to bring the disgruntled ex-Jacksonians into the fold, but his tactic of promoting the American System as the major issue of the campaign was ill-designed for this purpose.

While some Southerners did favor the bank, they were unwilling to break publicly with Jackson on this issue, and Vice President Calhoun was overtly hostile to the American System by 1832.

In South Carolina, the faction loyal to Calhoun nominated a slate of independent electors who voted for Governor John Floyd of Virginia.

Elsewhere, dissident Southern Jacksonians protested the nomination of Martin Van Buren by supporting Philip P. Barbour for vice president but were unwilling to break with Jackson himself.

As the Barbour movement suggests, Jackson's personal popularity worked against the growth of opposition politics in the South despite the growing dissatisfaction with the national administration.

The failure of Anti-Jacksonians to unite behind a single candidate for president alarmed leaders like William Henry Seward and Thurlow Weed, who worked feverishly to avoid a disastrous split in the opposition vote.

His margin in Pennsylvania was much reduced from 1828, but still wider than the Democratic majority in the gubernatorial election held in October, due largely to the drop in support for the Anti-Masons.

[18][19] While Clay hoped to alienate the different wings of the Democratic Party from each other by promoting the bank as an issue, his strategy backfired, as Jackson's veto message compellingly portrayed him as the defender of the common people against the furious assault of the financial interests.

Meanwhile, Clay's high-handed treatment of the Anti-Masons discouraged unity among Anti-Jacksonians, and the unpopularity of the National Republicans frustrated efforts to unite all opponents of the administration under a single roof.

[25] As of 2024, Jackson was the second of eight presidential nominees to win a significant number of electoral votes in at least three elections, the others being Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump.

Jackson was the second of only five presidents to win re-election with a smaller percentage of the popular vote than in prior elections, the other four are James Madison in 1812, Grover Cleveland in 1892, Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944 and Barack Obama in 2012.

[26] Following the election and Clay's defeat, an Anti-Jackson coalition would be formed out of National Republicans, Anti-Masons, disaffected Jacksonians, and small remnants of the Federalist Party whose last political activity was with them a decade before.