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The obvious example would be the election of 1860. Americans had become so divided over the question of slavery that it wasn't even really a national contest. The young Republican party wasn't even on the ballot in the states of lower South. Of those states that went into the Confederacy, only Virginia even listed Lincoln as an option. In the North, the contest was between Lincoln's Republicans and Stephen Douglas' Democrats. Despite viciously racist campaigning designed to paint Lincoln as a black lover, Douglas was only able to win Missouri and split the anti-Lincoln vote in California and Oregon enough to hand those states to the Republicans. You see the Democratic party had split over the issue of Kansas, and John C. Breckinridge ran as the candidate of the Southern Democrats. He ran against Douglas and Lincoln in the West. In New Jersey and New York, he ran a fusion campaign with Douglas but they still managed to lose.

In the South, it was another matter. There, Douglas was at least often on the ballot, but he was an after thought. The real contest was between Breckinridge and the pro-slavery unionists represented by John Bell and the Constitutional Union party. Bell contested every slave state election, and was on the ballot in most of the others. He managed to win a few states in the upper South. But in the end, all but two of the states that would secede voted for Breckinridge.

I would say that election was much much more divided and disastrous than our election today by any measure.