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1908 United States presidential election

The 1908 United States presidential election was the 31st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1908. Republican Party nominee William Howard Taft defeated three-time Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan.

Incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt honored his promise not to seek a third term (for him, a second full term), and persuaded his close friend, Taft, to become his successor. With Roosevelt's support, Taft won the presidential nomination at the 1908 Republican National Convention on the first ballot. The Democratic Party nominated Bryan, who had been defeated twice previously, in 1896 and 1900, by Republican William McKinley.

Bryan, part of the more liberal/progressive wing of the Democratic Party, ran a vigorous campaign against the nation's business elite. But even so, he suffered the worst loss of his three presidential campaigns in his percentage of both the popular vote and electoral vote. Taft won 51.6% of the popular vote and carried most states outside of the Solid South. Taft's triumph gave Republicans their fourth consecutive presidential election victory. The Republican Party lost the presidency four years later to the Democrats, due to a party split between Taft and Roosevelt. Two third-party candidates, Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party and Eugene W. Chafin of the Prohibition Party, each took over 1% of the popular vote. This would also be the last election before Arizona and New Mexico gained statehood on January 6 and February 14, 1912.

Candidates
The Republican nomination contest marked the introduction of the presidential preference primary. The idea of the primary to nominate candidates was sponsored by anti-machine politicians such as New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes and Senator Albert B. Cummins. The first state to hold a presidential primary to select delegates to a national convention was Florida in 1904, when Democratic Party voters held a primary among uninstructed candidates for delegate. Early in 1908, the only two Republican contenders running nationwide campaigns for the presidential nomination were Secretary of War William Howard Taft and Governor Joseph B. Foraker, both of Ohio. In the nomination contest, four states held primaries to select national convention delegates. In Ohio, the state Republican Party held a primary on February 11. Candidates pledged to Taft were printed on the ballot in a Taft column, and candidates pledged to Foraker were printed in a column under his name. Taft won a resounding victory in Ohio. The three states holding primaries to select delegates without the preference component were split: California chose a slate of delegates that supported Taft; Wisconsin elected a slate that supported Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr., and Pennsylvania elected a slate that supported its Senator Philander C. Knox.

The 1908 Republican Convention was held in Chicago between June 16 and 19. William Howard Taft was nominated with 702 votes to 68 for Knox, 67 for Hughes, 58 for Cannon, 40 for Fairbanks, 25 for La Follette, 16 for Foraker, 3 for President Roosevelt, and one abstention.

Representative James S. Sherman from New York received the vice-presidential nomination.

Candidates
As the 1908 election approached, William Jennings Bryan was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Bryan's most formidable challenger for the nomination was Minnesota Governor John Albert Johnson. Johnson's rags-to-riches story, honesty, reformist credentials, and ability to win in a heavily Republican state made him popular within the Democratic Party. In March, the Minnesota Democratic State Convention endorsed Johnson for president. By the end of June, however, Bryan had amassed more than the requisite two-thirds of the delegates needed for nomination.

The 1908 Democratic National Convention was held in Denver between July 7 and 10. Johnson, aware of the fact that Bryan's nomination was a foregone conclusion, released his delegates, thereby allowing Bryan to win the nomination on the first ballot.

Bryan left the choice of vice-president to the delegates. John W. Kern from Indiana was unanimously declared the candidate for vice-president without a formal ballot after the names of Charles A. Towne, Archibald McNeil, and Clark Howell were withdrawn from consideration. Kern was a former state senator (1893-1897) and two-time gubernatorial candidate (1900 and 1904).

In response to nomination of Bryan and Kern, The New York Times disparagingly pointed out that the Democratic national ticket was consistent because "a man twice defeated for the Presidency was at the head of it, and a man twice defeated for governor of his state was at the tail of it."

Nominees
In 1904 the national Populist Party ticket fared fairly well. Its total was twice the party's total in the previous presidential election, and in ten states, it received over 1% of the vote. It also offered 47 candidates for the House of Representatives, though the only ones elected were cross-endorsed by one of the major parties. The party remained in fusion with either the Democrats or the Republicans in many states. The following three years were a trying time for the party. When Democrats began to call for the nomination of Bryan in 1908, western Populist leader Thomas Tibbles announced that the People's Party would probably not support him since he had gone into the hands of the Eastern business interests. Two months later, Nebraska Democrats decided in their state convention to end fusion with the Populists, but they changed their mind after an all-night conference. In the midterm elections the party only offered 10 candidates for House, and the Kansas People's Party officially disbanded in December when that state party's leader announced that he was joining the Republicans.

By late 1907, many Populists were hoping that Thomas Watson would agree to run for president again. The previous three years had been unusual for Watson. He gave a speech to a gathering of farmers in Greensborough, Georgia and while preparing for supper, the house where he was staying was burned. In mid-1906, Watson called on Georgia Populists to vote for Hoke Smith for governor in the Democratic primary, which fueled speculation that Watson was thinking of returning to the Democrats. In early 1907, Watson started a network of Populist-leaning publications to keep the party's principles alive; Tibbles was chosen to serve as the chief editor. One month later, someone fired shots into the Watsons' house in Augusta. He had an altercation with an African-American porter on a train; when the porter said that he was unable to increase the train's speed, Watson hit the man in the face with the cap of his cane.

The People's Party National Committee met on November 26, 1907, to make preparations for the 1908 national convention. National chairman James Ferriss indicated that Thomas Watson was the front runner for the nomination, saying that the party hoped to forge an alliance with one or more of the other minor parties, including possibly the Independence League or the Prohibitionists. In early 1908, however, at least one member of the national committee believed that Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin would win the Populist nomination.

On the first day of the convention, the delegation from Nebraska worked to adjourn the convention; they had already decided to support Bryan if he became the Democratic nominee. They managed to delay the official organization of the convention all day. One of their delegates, A.M. Walling of Nebraska, told the New York Times "we shall bolt if the convention attempts to nominate Thomas E. Watson, or any one else. We are not alone, for we have assurances that Minnesota, Georgia, and possibly Michigan and Kansas will walk out when we do".

The convention was organized on the second day and completed all its relevant business. Watson supporters chose George A. Honnecker of New Jersey to serve as the permanent chairman, defeating the Bryan supporters' choice, Jacob Coxey. The platform called for inflation of the currency, public ownership of railroads, telephones, and telegraphs, labor legislation, and a ban on futures gambling. When the time for nominations began, a schism took place; Watson's name was placed in nomination, and the Nebraska delegation bolted. They were followed by T.J. Weighan, the sole delegate from Minnesota. Watson was then nominated for president; his running mate was Samuel Williams of Indiana.

Candidates
The radical members of the party supported giving the nomination to Bill Haywood. Debs' health was in question until Ben Hanford, a member of the New York delegation, read a letter from Debs stating that he was in good health and would give his support to whoever won the nomination. Seymour Stedman, an opponent of Debs, proposed Algie Martin Simons, who had the support of the right wing in the party, for the nomination. Victor L. Berger proposed Carl D. Thompson for the nomination and it was seconded by Winfield R. Gaylord and Carolyn Lloyd Strobell. James F. Carey was nominated by Ida Crouch-Hazlett. Max S. Hayes nomination was seconded by Alfred Wagenknecht. Phillip H. Callery nominated Debs on May 14, 1908, and it was seconded by John Spargo and he won the nomination on the first ballot with 159 votes out of the 198 cast. A motion by Berger and Stedman to make the selection unanimous was approved. Carey's name was put up for the vice-presidential nomination by the Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Montana delegations, but he declined to run, and Caleb Lipscomb too declined. Hanford won the vice-presidential selection with 106 votes on the first ballot, which was later made unanimous. Debs' campaign was managed by J. Mahlon Barnes. This was the first time that a candidate besides Debs had been nominated for the Socialist presidential nomination.

Lincoln Steffens initially believed that Debs was not suitable for the presidency, but later told Brand Whitlock, the mayor of Toledo, Ohio, to vote for Debs after Steffens interviewed Debs and Berger. Haywood fundraised for the purchase of a train, which had over 200,000 contributors, that was later named the Red Special. Debs' train left on August 30, 1908, and traveled over 9,000 miles and gave 187 speeches over twenty-five days. Twenty-two million copies of Appeal to Reason were distributed during the campaign and the newspaper gained 50,000 subscribers.

Theodore Roosevelt believed that the Socialists would take progressive votes away from Taft and stated that Debs' speeches were "mere pieces of the literature of criminal violence". Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor and who had endorsed Bryan, criticized Debs, accusing him of receiving secret funding for his train from the Republicans. The Socialists published the names of every contributor to the train fund and the amount they donated, and also challenged Gompers to a debate, but he refused. Former President Grover Cleveland, and the Chicago Tribune, predicted that the Socialists would receive over one million votes.

Debs hoped to receive over a million votes, but only received 420,852 votes which was a 20,000 vote increase from the 1904 election. Debs stated that the reason for the small increase was due to Democrats who had supported him in 1904 over Parker had voted for Bryan and that those who remained were pure socialist votes.

Nominees
The Socialist Labor Party met in New York City from July 2 to July 5 in Arlington Hall, St. Mark's Place. While increasingly dwarfed by the growing membership of the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debs and Bill Haywood, Daniel De Leon and his compatriots remained committed to maintaining their separate course, considering Debs and his platform to be "reactionary". An attempt was made to depose Leon from his position of editor of the Party's papers in favor of a more moderate candidate, for fear that Leon's writings were alienating voters who might otherwise be sympathetic to their cause. The report was overwhelmingly voted down after Leon spoke in defense of his conduct as the Party's editor, with a rival report being adopted praising his leadership. When it came time for the nominations, Leon personally nominated Martin Preston of Nevada, who was currently serving a twenty-five-year sentence for the murder of Anton Silva. While noting that Preston was only 32 at the time, Leon remarked that "it was for the working people to elect Preston, and if he was elected he would be seated". Preston's nomination was ratified unanimously, with Donald Munro of Virginia winning in a contest against Arthur S. Dower of Texas for the vice presidential nomination. The nominations were later formalized at Cooper Union following the close of the convention.

Only days later, however, Martin Preston replied in a telegram that he could not accept the Presidential nomination, a declination that had not been expected nor prepared for. August Gillhaus of New York was later nominated in Preston's stead.

Nominees
The Prohibition Party met in Columbus, Ohio, on July 14 and 15 to nominate its presidential ticket. Eugene Chafin was nominated on the third ballot in an open contest. When the runner-up for the Presidential nomination William Palmore, a Methodist Minister from Missouri and Editor of the St. Louis Christian Advocate, declined his nomination for the Vice Presidency, the convention hurriedly allowed for a new set of nominations and another ballot. Aaron Watkins of Ohio would win a majority on the first ballot.

Candidates
Disappointed with his performance in the 1904 Democratic presidential nomination campaign, and disillusioned as to his chances of successfully attaining it in 1908, William Randolph Hearst decided to run instead on the ticket of a third party of his own making. Originally borne from the Municipal Ownership League, a vehicle for Hearst's ultimately unsuccessful bid for the mayoralty of New York in 1905, it was Hearst's intention to fuse it with the remnants of the Populist Party led by Thomas Watson, a former Representative from Georgia who had been its presidential nominee in 1904. However, these intentions were dashed when every candidate that the Independence Party put forth in elections held in New York was elected except Hearst himself, despite an endorsement by the Democratic Party. Devastated, Hearst declared his intention never again to be a candidate.

While Hearst would no longer be the nominee, he fully intended to exercise influence at the Independence Party's convention; the platform itself was in large part a statement of his own views. With its candidates nominated, the party's purpose was changed from being a path for Hearst's presidential ambitions to being an instrument of his wrath. Through the influence of his papers and generous financial donations, Hearst hoped that the Independence ticket would draw away votes from William Jennings Bryan and lead to his defeat by Taft; this personal vendetta stemmed from Bryan failing to support Hearst's own bid for the Presidency in 1904.

Campaign
With the Free Silver issue no longer dominant, Bryan campaigned on a progressive platform attacking "government by privilege." His campaign slogan, "Shall the People Rule?", was featured on numerous posters and campaign memorabilia. However, Taft undercut Bryan's liberal support by accepting some of his reformist ideas, and Roosevelt's progressive policies blurred the distinctions between the parties. Republicans also used the slogan "Vote for Taft now, you can vote for Bryan anytime", a sarcastic reference to Bryan's two failed previous presidential campaigns.

The Socialist candidate, Eugene Debs, embarked on an ambitious whistle-stop tour aboard a train nicknamed the Red Special, giving speeches regarding the Socialist cause across the country. The exertion of the tour exhausted Debs, and at certain points his brother Theodore - who bore a great resemblance to Eugene - substituted for him to allow the candidate to rest.

Businessmen continued to support the Republican Party, and Bryan failed to secure the support of labor. As a result, Bryan ended up with the worst of his three defeats in the national popular vote. He lost almost all the northern states to Taft and the popular vote by 8 percentage points.

This would be Bryan's last campaign for the presidency, although he would remain a popular figure within the Democratic Party and in 1912 would play a key role in securing the presidential nomination for Woodrow Wilson. Charles W. Bryan, William's brother, would become the (losing) Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1924. Bryan's 162 electoral votes from this election, combined with his 155 and 176 electoral votes from 1900 and 1896 respectively, make him the person with the most electoral votes never to be president.

Results
Forty-six states participated, as Oklahoma had joined the Union less than a year prior to the ballot. Bryan won forty-eight counties in the new state of Oklahoma. The most important increase in number of counties carried by Bryan was in the West South Central section, in part due to the vote of newly admitted Oklahoma.

Of the 2,858 counties making returns, Taft won in 1,494 (52.27%) while Bryan carried 1,355 (47.41%). Nine (0.31%) counties recorded more votes cast for "Other(s)" than either of the two main party candidates, whilst twenty-eight counties (0.97%) recorded zero votes due to being inhabited either by Native Americans who would not gain full citizenship for sixteen years, or by disenfranchised southern African-Americans. Taft had a majority in 1,325 counties, while Bryan had a majority in 1,204 counties.

By carrying 1,355 counties, Bryan won more counties than he had in 1900 (1,340), but he did not reach or surpass the number of counties he had won in 1896 (1,559). Bryan won more counties than McKinley in 1896, but failed to carry more counties than the Republican candidate in 1900 or 1904. Compared with his strength in previous elections, however, Bryan carried 69 counties in 1908 which had not been Democratic in either 1896 or 1900.

Bryan increased the area carried by Democrats in every part of the country except New England and the South. He doubled the number of Democratic counties in Wisconsin and won more counties in Indiana than were carried by plurality vote by the Democrats in any election in the Fourth Party System except 1912. He made decided gains in Missouri and in his home state of Nebraska, besides achieving notable victories in Colorado and Nevada. However, in four Western states (Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, and North Dakota), there was not one Democratic county. This was true likewise of Michigan, Delaware, and each of the New England states.

The total vote increased greatly, by more than a million vis-à-vis 1904. The major parties shared very unequally in the increase: whereas Taft had nearly fifty thousand more than Theodore Roosevelt, Bryan had nearly 1,500,000 more votes than Alton Parker had garnered, and more than in either of his previous campaigns.

It was noticeable that the "other" vote was only about seven thousand less than four years earlier. The "other" vote was a plurality in nine counties in the states of Georgia and Texas.

The size of the vote cast for the defeated Bryan in 1908 is clear evidence of perhaps the most striking feature of the American presidential vote. In this third attempt at the presidency, and in an election following one in which the nominee of his party polled only five million votes, Bryan had heavy support in every section of the country, and in every state. Moreover, nearly two-thirds of the vote cast for Bryan was from the fifteen states of the (Northeastern) Mid-Atlantic, East North Central, and West North Central sections, in which the Democratic candidate carried only one state (Nebraska).

Despite all conclusions as to predominant sentiment in the different sections and its economic, social, and political causes, there was a national vote cast for Bryan, and it was urban as well as rural; it was eastern, western, southern, and northern. Everywhere the Democratic Party was the minority party, and it was not hopeless, nor was it helpless. It was the agency for the expression of the opposition of almost six and a half million voters. According to Historian George E. Mowry:
 * What was especially significant in the election was the continued growth in the strength of the Democratic party and the success of the so-called progressive Republican candidates in the Midwest. The Republicans had not only lost seats in the House of Representatives but they had also lost governors in Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, and North Dakota, all of which voted for Taft. In Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, and even in Kansas self-announced progressive Republicans, who had previously defeated conservatives in the primaries, were more successful in beating their Democratic rivals. The election, The New York Times reported, had been punctuated with "independent voting". A closer analysis of the returns indicated that the voter in the Midwest had expressed his independence mostly from standpat Republicanism symbolized by the control of Speaker Cannon in the House and Aldrich in the Senate.

As of 2022, this is the most recent of only two elections in which Kansas and Nebraska did not vote for the same candidate, the most recent in which Nebraska voted differently from both Kansas and North Dakota, and the most recent in which a Republican won the presidency without winning Nebraska. As of 2020, Bryan was the fifth of seven presidential nominees to win a significant number of electoral votes in at least three elections, the others being Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon. Of these, Jackson, Cleveland, and Roosevelt also won the popular vote in at least three elections. Clay and Bryan are the only two candidates to have lost three presidential elections.

Source (Popular Vote):

Source (Electoral Vote):

Results by state
Source:

States that flipped from Republican to Democratic

 * Colorado
 * Nebraska
 * Nevada

Close states
Margin of victory less than 1% (34 electoral votes):
 * 1) Missouri, 0.09% (629 votes)
 * 2) Maryland, 0.25% (605 votes)

Margin of victory less than 5% (46 electoral votes):
 * 1) Colorado, 1.12% (2,951 votes)
 * 2) Indiana, 1.49% (10,731 votes)
 * 3) Nebraska, 1.54% (4,102 votes)
 * 4) Kentucky, 1.71% (8,381 votes)
 * 5) Nevada, 1.78% (437 votes)
 * 6) Montana, 4.37% (3,007 votes)
 * 7) Oklahoma, 4.66% (11,889 votes)

Margin of victory between 5% and 10% (60 electoral votes):
 * 1) Delaware, 6.16% (2,959 votes)
 * 2) Tennessee, 6.86% (17,631 votes)
 * 3) Ohio, 6.20% (69,591 votes)
 * 4) North Carolina, 8.73% (22,041 votes)
 * 5) Kansas, 9.58% (36,007 votes)

Tipping point state:
 * 1) West Virginia, 10.25% (26,451 votes)

Statistics
Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Republican)
 * 1)  Leslie County, Kentucky 92.96%
 * 2)  Unicoi County, Tennessee 92.77%
 * 3)  Sevier County, Tennessee 91.44%
 * 4)  Keweenaw County, Michigan 90.56%
 * 5)  Johnson County, Tennessee 90.21%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Democratic)
 * 1)  Hampton County, South Carolina 100.00%
 * 2)  King County, Texas 100.00%
 * 3)  Garza County, Texas 100.00%
 * 4)  Loving County, Texas 100.00%
 * 5)  Wilcox County, Alabama 99.81%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Other)
 * 1)  Terry County, Texas 100.00%
 * 2)  Glascock County, Georgia 69.97%
 * 3)  McDuffie County, Georgia 64.31%
 * 4)  Lincoln County, Georgia 61.65%
 * 5)  Oconee County, Georgia 56.21%


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1912 United States presidential election

The 1912 United States presidential election was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey unseated incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft while defeating former President Theodore Roosevelt (who ran under the banner of the new Progressive/"Bull Moose" Party) and Socialist Party nominee Eugene V. Debs.

Roosevelt served as president from 1901 to 1909 as a Republican, and Taft succeeded him with his support. Taft's conservatism angered Roosevelt, so he challenged Taft for the party nomination at the 1912 Republican National Convention. When Taft and his conservative allies narrowly prevailed, Roosevelt rallied his progressive supporters and launched a third-party bid. At the Democratic Convention, Wilson won the presidential nomination on the 46th ballot, defeating Speaker of the House Champ Clark and several other candidates with the support of William Jennings Bryan and other progressive Democrats. The Socialist Party renominated its perennial standard-bearer, Eugene V. Debs.

The general election was bitterly contested by Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs. Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" platform called for social insurance programs, reduction to an eight-hour workday, and robust federal regulation of the economy. Wilson's "New Freedom" platform called for tariff reduction, banking reform, and new antitrust regulation. Incumbent Taft conducted a subdued campaign based on his platform of "progressive conservatism". Debs, who was attempting to gain widespread support for his socialist policies, claimed that Wilson, Roosevelt and Taft were all financed by different factions within the capitalist trusts, and that Roosevelt in particular was a demagogue using socialistic language in order to divert socialist policies up safe channels for the capitalist establishment.

The Republican split enabled Wilson to win 40 states and a landslide victory in the electoral college with just 41.8% of the popular vote, the lowest vote share for a victorious presidential candidate since 1860. Wilson was the first Democrat to win a presidential election since 1892 as well as the first presidential candidate to receive over 400 electoral votes in a presidential election. Roosevelt finished second with 88 electoral votes and 27% of the popular vote. Taft carried 23% of the national vote and won two states, Vermont and Utah. Debs, the fourth-place finisher, won no electoral votes but received 6% of the popular vote, which remains the highest percentage of the vote ever won by a socialist candidate in the history of US presidential elections. This is the most recent presidential election since 1876 in which the Democratic ticket has consisted of sitting governors.

Background
Republican President Theodore Roosevelt had declined to run for re-election in 1908 in fulfillment of a pledge to the American people not to seek a third term. Roosevelt had tapped Secretary of War William Howard Taft to become his successor, and Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan in the 1908 general election.

Republican Party split

During Taft's administration, a rift developed between Roosevelt and Taft, and they became the leaders of the Republican Party's two wings: progressives led by Roosevelt and conservatives led by Taft. Progressives favored labor restrictions protecting women and children, promoted ecological conservation, and were more sympathetic toward labor unions. They also favored the popular election of federal and state judges over appointment by the president or governors. Conservatives supported high tariffs to encourage domestic production, but favored business leaders over labor unions and were generally opposed to the popular election of judges.

Taft's Policies
Cracks in the party began to show when Taft supported the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act in 1909. The Act favored the industrial Northeast and angered the Northwest and South, where demand was strong for tariff reductions. Early in his term, President Taft had promised to stand for a lower tariff bill, but protectionism had been a major policy of the Republican Party since its founding.

Taft also fought against Roosevelt's antitrust policy. Roosevelt distinguished "good trusts" from "bad trusts", for which he had been lambasted. Taft argued that all monopolies must be broken up. Taft also fired popular conservationist Gifford Pinchot as head of the Bureau of Forestry in 1910. By 1910, the split within the party was deep, and Roosevelt and Taft turned against one another despite their personal friendship. In that summer Roosevelt began a national speaking tour, during which he outlined his progressive philosophy and the New Nationalist platform, which he introduced in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31.

Court Power and Judicial Recall
Another source of tension involved the authority of the nation's courts, especially the Supreme Court. As early as 1910, Roosevelt had begun criticizing certain court decisions, such as Lochner v. New York (1905), and those jurists whom he dubbed "fossilized judges." He believed that the Supreme Court was interpreting the due process clause of the 14th Amendment and the doctrine of "freedom of contract" to forestall necessary reform legislation, such as the limiting of work hours. He, as well as more populist progressives like William Jennings Bryan in the Democratic Party, came out in favor of an amendment to allow the recall of judges and, possibly, judicial decisions. This outraged Taft (a former judge and future Supreme Court Chief Justice) and other constitutional conservatives, like Elihu Root and Alton B. Parker. Taft considered Roosevelt a danger to constitutional government and resolved to resist his eventual challenge for the Republican nomination.

Roosevelt Emboldened
In the 1910 midterm elections, the Republicans lost 57 seats in the House of Representatives as the Democrats gained a majority for the first time since 1894. These results were a large defeat for the conservative wing of the party. James E. Campbell writes that one cause may have been a large number of progressive voters choosing third-party candidates over conservative Republicans. Roosevelt continued to reject calls to run for president into 1911. In a January letter to newspaper editor William Allen White, he wrote, "I do not think there is one chance in a thousand that it will ever be wise to have me nominated."

However, speculation continued, further harming Roosevelt and Taft's relationship. After months of continually increasing support, Roosevelt changed his position, writing to journalist Henry Beach Needham in January 1912 that if the nomination "comes to me as a genuine public movement of course I will accept."

Delegate selection
For the first time, many convention delegates were elected in presidential preference primaries. Progressive Republicans advocated primary elections as a way of breaking the control of political parties by bosses. Altogether, twelve states held Republican primaries.

Senator Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette won two of the first four primaries (North Dakota and his home state of Wisconsin), but Taft won a major victory in Roosevelt's home state of New York and continued to rack up delegates in more conservative, traditional state conventions.

Beginning with a runaway victory in Illinois on April 9, Roosevelt won nine of the last ten presidential primaries (including Taft's home state of Ohio), losing only Massachusetts.

Taft also had support from the bulk of the Southern Republican organizations. Delegates from the former Confederate states supported Taft by a 5 to 1 margin. These states had voted solidly Democratic in every presidential election since 1880, and Roosevelt objected that they were given one-quarter of the delegates when they would contribute nothing to a Republican victory.

Convention
388 delegates were selected through the primaries and Roosevelt won 281 delegates, Taft received 71 delegates, and La Follette received 36 delegates. However, Taft had a 566–466 margin, placing him over the 540 needed for nomination, with the delegations selected at state conventions. Roosevelt accused the Taft faction of having over 200 fraudulently selected delegates. However, the Republican National Committee ruled in favor of Taft for 233 of the delegate cases while 6 were in favor of Roosevelt. The committee reinvestigated the 92 of the contested delegates and ruled in favor of Taft for all of them.

Roosevelt supporters criticized the large amount of delegates coming from areas the Republicans would not win, with over 200 delegates coming from areas that had not been won by a Republican since the Compromise of 1877, or the four delegates that came from the territories which didn't vote in the general election. However, Roosevelt had rejected an attempt to abolish delegations from the south at the 1908 Republican National Convention due to him needing them for Taft's nomination.

Herbert S. Hadley served as Roosevelt's floor manager at the convention. Hadley made a motion for 74 of Taft's delegates to be replaced by 72 delegates after the reading of the convention call, but his motion was ruled out of order. Elihu Root, a supporter of Taft, was selected to chair the convention after winning 558 votes against McGovern's 501 votes. Root was accused of having won through the rotten boroughs of the southern delegations as every northern state, except for four, voted for McGovern. In his closing speech, Root reiterated the party's support of "constitutional checks and limitations" by quoting figures like Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, and Abraham Lincoln, effectively rebuking Roosevelt's support of the judicial recall and identifying the GOP with constitutional conservatism.

Roosevelt broke with tradition and attended the convention, where he was welcomed with great support from voters. Despite Roosevelt's presence in Chicago and his attempts to disqualify Taft supporters, the incumbent ticket of Taft and James S. Sherman was renominated on the first ballot. Sherman was the first sitting vice president re-nominated since John C. Calhoun in 1828. After losing the vote, Roosevelt announced the formation of a new party dedicated "to the service of all the people." This would later come to be known as the Progressive Party. Roosevelt announced that his party would hold its convention in Chicago and that he would accept their nomination if offered. Meanwhile, Taft decided not to campaign before the election beyond his acceptance speech on August 1. Warren G. Harding presented Taft's name for the nomination. Taft won the nomination while 344 of Roosevelt's delegates abstained from the vote. Henry Justin Allen read a speech from Roosevelt in which he criticized the process and stated that delegates had been stolen from his in order to secure Taft's nomination.

Other major candidates
In early 1912, it was widely believed that three-time Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan would make a fourth attempt to earn the party's nomination, and would likely not have difficulty in earning it. However, Bryan announced several months before the convention that he was not interested in another run for the White House. Though still seen by many as the Democrats' ideological leader, power shifts within the party in the wake of their success at the 1910 mid-term elections meant that Bryan could no longer be guaranteed the two-thirds majority needed to earn the nomination.

Bryan privately conceded that his three presidential runs having all ended in decisive losses, firstly to William McKinley, and then to Taft, would seriously handicap his credibility as a candidate, even if the 1904 election, the only one of the previous four in which Bryan was not the Democratic candidate, had resulted in an even more lop-sided defeat for the party. However, Bryan still had enough followers in the party that he was in a strong position to be the kingmaker at the convention.

The Democratic Convention was held in Baltimore from June 25 to July 2. Initially, the front-runner was Speaker of the House Champ Clark of Missouri. Though Clark received the most votes on early ballots, he was unable to get the two-thirds majority required to win.

Clark's chances were hurt when Tammany Hall, the powerful New York City Democratic political machine, threw its support behind him. The Tammany endorsement caused Bryan, three-time Democratic presidential candidate and leader of the party's progressives, to turn against Clark, whom he decried as the candidate of Wall Street, and shift his support to reformist Governor of New Jersey Woodrow Wilson. Wilson had consistently finished second in balloting, and nearly gave up hope and almost freed his delegates to vote for another candidate. Instead, Bryan's defection from Clark to Wilson led many other delegates to do the same. Wilson gradually gained strength while Clark's support dwindled, and Wilson finally received the nomination on the 46th ballot.

Thomas R. Marshall, the Governor of Indiana who had swung Indiana's votes to Wilson, was named Wilson's running mate.

Progressive Party nomination

Taft had won the Republican nomination while 344 of Roosevelt's delegates abstained from the vote. Later that day supporters of Roosevelt met in the Chicago Orchestra Hall and nominated him as an independent candidate for president which Roosevelt accepted although he requested a formal convention. Roosevelt initially considered not running as a third-party candidate until George Walbridge Perkins and Frank Munsey offered their financial support. Roosevelt and his supporters formed the Progressive Party at a convention, temporarily chaired by Senator Albert J. Beveridge, on August 5, and Hiram Johnson was selected as his vice-presidential running mate. Ben B. Lindsey and John M. Parker had been considered for the presidential nomination, but Parker and Lindsey instead both nominated Johnson for the position.

The Progressives promised to increase federal regulation and protect the welfare of ordinary people. At the convention, Perkins blocked an antitrust plank, shocking reformers who thought of Roosevelt as a true trust-buster. The delegates to the convention sang the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" as their anthem. In his acceptance speech, Roosevelt compared the coming presidential campaign to the Battle of Armageddon and stated that the Progressives were going to "battle for the Lord."

Socialist Party nomination
Socialist candidates:
 * Eugene V. Debs, former State Senator from Indiana
 * Emil Seidel, Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin
 * Charles Edward Russell, journalist from Iowa

Members of the Socialist Party of America had won in multiple elections between the 1908 and 1912 presidential elections with Emil Seidel being elected as the mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Victor L. Berger was elected to the United States House of Representatives. The party claimed that it had 435 members elected to office by 1911, and over one thousand by 1912.

Dan Hogan put Debs name up for the presidential nomination. Debs won the presidential nomination, although he had supported giving the nomination to the Appeal to Reason's editor Fred Warren, with 165 votes while Seidel received 56 votes and Charles Edward Russell received 54 votes. Seidel was given the vice-presidential nomination against Russell and Hogan.

After the presidential ballot Seidel and Russell proposed a motion to make Debs' nomination unanimous and it was accepted. Hogan and Slayton proposed to make the nomination of Seidel unanimous after the vice-presidential selection and it was accepted. Otto Branstetter, Berger, and Carl D. Thompson, who were serving as delegates, voted for Seidel during the presidential balloting. Morris Hillquit, Meyer London, and John Spargo, who were serving as delegates, supported Russell during the presidential balloting. Hogan, a delegate from Arkansas, had supported Debs during the presidential balloting.

J. Mahlon Barnes, who had managed Debs' campaign in the 1908 election, also managed the campaign in 1912. The Socialists predicted that they would receive over two million votes and have twelve members elected to Congress, but Debs only received 897,011 votes and Berger lost reelection. Debs received his largest number of votes from Ohio while his best percentage was in Nevada. The largest percentage gain since the 1908 presidential election was in West Virginia where their vote total increased by over 300%. George Brinton McClellan Harvey stated that had Roosevelt not run then Debs would have gained an additional half a million votes. The number of Socialists in the state legislatures increased from twenty to twenty-one.

General election
Roosevelt conducted a vigorous national campaign for the Progressive Party, denouncing the way the Republican nomination had been "stolen". He bundled together his reforms under the rubric of "The New Nationalism" and stumped the country for a strong federal role in regulating the economy and chastising bad corporations. Roosevelt rallied progressives with speeches denouncing the political establishment. He promised "an expert tariff commission, wholly removed from the possibility of political pressure or of improper business influence."

Wilson supported a policy called "The New Freedom". This policy was based mostly on individualism instead of a strong government. Wilson opposed Roosevelt's proposal to establish a powerful state bureaucracy charged with regulating large corporations, with Wilson instead favoring the break-up of large corporations in order to create a level economic playing field. Though Wilson's rhetoric paid homage to the traditional Democratic Party skepticisms of government and "collectivism", after his election win Wilson would embrace some of the progressive reforms which Roosevelt had campaigned on.

Taft campaigned quietly and spoke of the need for judges to be more powerful than elected officials. The departure of the progressives left the Republican Party firmly controlled by the conservative wing. Much of the Republican effort was designed to discredit Roosevelt as a dangerous radical, but this had little effect. Many of the nation's pro-Republican newspapers depicted Roosevelt as an egotist running only to spoil Taft's chances and feed his vanity.

The Socialists had little funding compared to the Republican, Democratic and Progressive campaigns. Debs' campaign spent only $66,000, mostly on 3.5 million leaflets and travel to locally organized rallies. Debs' biggest event was a speech to 15,000 supporters in New York City. The crowd sang "La Marseillaise" and "The Internationale." Debs's running mate Emil Seidel boasted:

"Only a year ago workingmen were throwing decayed vegetables and rotten eggs at us but now all is changed... Eggs are too high. There is a great giant growing up in this country that will someday take over the affairs of this nation. He is a little giant now but he is growing fast. The name of this little giant is socialism."

Debs claimed that there was no hope under the present decaying capitalist system, and that the worker who votes the Republican or Democratic ticket does worse than throw away his vote, as he is a deserter of his class and becomes his own worst enemy. Debs insisted that Democrats, Progressives, and Republicans alike were financed by different factions within the capitalist trusts, and that only the Socialists represented labor. Debs condemned "Injunction Bill Taft" and condemned Roosevelt for stealing his socialist clothes with the intent to make socialist policies "safer" for the establishment.

At a campaign speech in Philadelphia on September 28, 1912, Debs said of Roosevelt:

"Theodore Roosevelt now alludes to me as 'Brother Debs'. I do not acknowledge the new relation. I still wish to be the undesirable citizen in his eyes. If he knew me then, I know him now. I know what he stands for and what his methods are. I know he is the enemy of the workers. I know he is now trying to deceive that class to further his own selfish ambition — to get back into the White House and if possible remain there for life."

Attempted assassination of Theodore Roosevelt
At a campaign stop in Milwaukee on October 14, John Schrank, a saloonkeeper from New York, shot Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet penetrated his steel eyeglass case and a 50-page single-folded copy of his speech Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual and became lodged in his chest. Schrank was immediately disarmed and captured. Schrank had been stalking Roosevelt. He was suffering from delusion and said the ghost of President McKinley ordered him to kill Roosevelt to prevent a third term.

Roosevelt shouted for Schrank to remain unharmed and assured the crowd he was all right, then ordered police to take charge of Schrank and ensure no violence was done to him. Roosevelt, an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung. He declined suggestions to go to the hospital and instead delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose." He spoke for 90 minutes before completing his speech and accepting medical attention.

Afterward, probes and an x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pleura. Doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to attempt to remove it, and Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life.

Taft was not campaigning and focused on his presidential duties. Wilson briefly suspended his campaigning. By October 17, Wilson was back on the campaign trail but avoided any criticism of Roosevelt or his party. Roosevelt spent two weeks recuperating before returning to the campaign trail with a major speech on October 30, designed to reassure his supporters he was strong enough for the presidency.

Death of Vice President Sherman
On October 30, 1912, Vice President James S. Sherman died of nephritis, leaving Taft without a running mate less than a week before the election. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, was quickly chosen to replace Sherman on the Republican ticket.

Results
On November 5, Wilson captured the presidency handily by carrying a record 40 states. As of, this is the only presidential election since 1860 in which 4 candidates received more than 5% of the popular vote and a third-party candidate outperformed a major party candidate in the general election. Wilson won the presidency with a lower percentage of the popular vote than any candidate since Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Taft's result remains the worst performance for any incumbent president, both in terms of electoral votes (8) and share of popular votes (23.17%). His 8 electoral votes remain the fewest by a Republican and by any major-party candidate, matched by Alf Landon's 1936 campaign. His 23.17% of the popular vote is the lowest ever for a Republican or any major party nominee.

This was the first time since 1852 that Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Rhode Island voted for a Democrat, and the first time in history that Massachusetts voted Democratic. Democrats would not win Maine again until 1964, Connecticut and Delaware until 1936, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, West Virginia, and Wisconsin until 1932, and Massachusetts and Rhode Island until 1928. Additionally, it was the last time until 1932 that the Republicans failed to win Michigan, Minnesota and South Dakota. This is one of two times since 1852 that Maine and Vermont did not support the same party (the other being in 1968). Theodore Roosevelt's 88 electoral votes and 27.4% of the popular vote are the highest won by a third party in a presidential election.

Wilson's raw vote total and percentage was less than William Jennings Bryan's total in any of his three campaigns. In only two regions, New England and the Pacific, was Wilson's vote greater than the greatest Bryan vote. The 1912 election was the first to include all 48 of the current contiguous United States. Only 12 of the 48 states saw a candidate win with a majority of the popular vote. Wilson won a majority in the 11 former Confederate states. Only South Dakota, where Taft did not appear on the ballot, gave Roosevelt a majority. Taft won only two states, Vermont and Utah, each with a plurality. This is the only time in American history that three people who at some point served as president ran in the same election.

Wilson finished 1st in 40 states. He finished 2nd behind Roosevelt in 5 states, and 2nd behind Taft only in Utah. He finished 3rd in 2 states, in Michigan where Roosevelt finished 1st and Taft finished 2nd, and in Vermont where Taft finished 1st and Roosevelt finished 2nd.

Roosevelt finished 1st in 6 states. He finished 2nd in 24 states, behind Wilson in 23, and behind Taft in Vermont. He finished 3rd in 17 states. In 15 of those, Wilson finished 1st and Taft finished 2nd. In the other two, Taft finished 1st and Wilson finished 2nd in Utah, while Wilson finished 1st and Debs finished 2nd in Florida. Roosevelt was not on the ballot in Oklahoma.

Taft finished 1st in Vermont and Utah. He finished 2nd in 18 states, behind Wilson in 17 of those. The one exception was Michigan where Taft finished 2nd behind Roosevelt. He finished 3rd in 21 states. In 18 of those, Wilson finished 1st and Roosevelt finished 2nd. In the other 3, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Washington, Roosevelt finished 1st and Wilson finished 2nd. Taft also finished 4th in 5 states. In 4 of those, the top 3 in order were Wilson-Roosevelt-Debs. In Florida, Wilson finished 1st, Debs finished 2nd, and Roosevelt finished 3rd. While not on the ballot in California, Taft received 3,914 write-in votes in the state, placing him 5th, behind Roosevelt, Wilson, Debs, and Chafin. Taft was not on the ballot at all in South Dakota, not even as a write-in option.

Debs finished 2nd in Florida behind Wilson. He finished 3rd in 7 states. In Nevada, Arizona, Louisiana and Mississippi, Wilson finished 1st, Roosevelt finished 2nd, Debs finished 3rd and Taft finished 4th. The other 3 states where Debs finished 3rd were Oklahoma, where Roosevelt was not on the ballot; South Dakota, where Taft was not on the ballot; and California, where Taft was not on the ballot, but received write-in votes, causing Taft to finish 5th in California. Debs finished 4th in 38 states. Debs was beaten by Chafin in two states, Vermont and Delaware, with Debs finishing 5th in both states.

Chafin finished last in 18 states. The states where Chafin avoided finishing last were 19 of the 20 states where Reimer was on the ballot – Reimer finished last in all 20 states that he contested – as well as Vermont and Delaware, where Chafin managed to force Debs into last place. The other state where Chafin avoided last place was California, where Taft was only a write-in candidate and finished last. Reimer was not on the ballot in 28 states, while Chafin was not on the ballot in 8 states. Only in Utah was Reimer on the ballot but Chafin was not.

By county
In a plurality of 1,396 counties, no candidate obtained a majority. Wilson won 1,969 counties but held a majority in only 1,237, less than Bryan had had in any of his campaigns.

"Other(s)", mostly Roosevelt, won a plurality in 772 counties and a majority in 305 counties. Most of them in Pennsylvania (48), Illinois (33), Michigan (68), Minnesota (75), Iowa (49), South Dakota (54), Nebraska (32), Kansas (51), Washington (38), and California (44).

Debs carried four counties: Lake and Beltrami in Minnesota, Burke in North Dakota, and Crawford in Kansas. These are the only counties ever to vote for the Socialist presidential nominee.

Taft won a plurality in only 232 counties and a majority in only 35. In addition to South Dakota and California, where there was no Taft ticket, Taft carried no counties in Maine, New Jersey, Minnesota, Nevada, Arizona, and seven "Solid South" states.

Nine counties did not record any votes due to either black disenfranchisement or being inhabited only by Native Americans, who would not gain full citizenship for twelve more years. As of, 1912 remains the last election in which the key Indiana counties of Hamilton and Hendricks, along with Walworth County, Wisconsin, Pulaski and Laurel Counties in Kentucky and Hawkins County, Tennessee have given a plurality to the Democratic candidate.

Source (Popular Vote):

Source (Electoral Vote):

States that flipped from Republican to Democratic

 * Connecticut
 * Delaware
 * Idaho
 * Illinois
 * Indiana
 * Iowa
 * Kansas
 * Maine
 * Maryland
 * Massachusetts
 * Montana
 * New Jersey
 * New York
 * New Hampshire
 * North Dakota
 * Ohio
 * Oregon
 * Rhode Island
 * Wisconsin
 * West Virginia
 * Wyoming

States that flipped from Republican to Progressive

 * California
 * Michigan
 * Minnesota
 * Pennsylvania
 * South Dakota
 * Washington

Close states
Margin of victory less than 1% (13 electoral votes):
 * 1) California, 0.03% (174 votes)

Margin of victory less than 5% (142 electoral votes):
 * 1) Idaho, 1.05% (1,111 votes)
 * 2) Illinois, 1.62% (18,570 votes)
 * 3) Wyoming, 1.77% (750 votes)
 * 4) Vermont, 1.91% (1,200 votes)
 * 5) Maine, 2.02% (2,618 votes)
 * 6) New Hampshire, 2.04% (1,797 votes)
 * 7) Connecticut, 3.28% (6,237 votes)
 * 8) Rhode Island, 3.48% (2,709 votes)
 * 9) Massachusetts, 3.58% (17,460 votes)
 * 10) Pennsylvania, 4.04% (49,257 votes)
 * 11) North Dakota, 4.42% (3,829 votes)
 * 12) Iowa, 4.77% (23,506 votes)
 * 13) Utah, 4.91% (5,521 votes)

Margin of victory between 5% and 10% (73 electoral votes):
 * 1) New Mexico, 5.48% (2,704 votes)
 * 2) Minnesota, 5.81% (19,430 votes)
 * 3) Kansas, 6.42% (23,453 votes)
 * 4) Montana, 6.87% (5,485 votes)
 * 5) Oregon, 6.91% (9,464 votes)
 * 6) New Jersey, 7.60% (32,879 votes)
 * 7) Washington, 8.32% (26,858 votes)
 * 8) Wisconsin, 8.41% (33,634 votes)
 * 9) South Dakota, 8.48% (9,869 votes)

Tipping point state:
 * 1) New York, 12.6% (200,086 votes) (for a Wilson victory)
 * 2) Ohio, 18.9% (146,666 votes) (for a Roosevelt victory)
 * 3) New Hampshire, 37.2% (32,743 votes) (for a Debs victory)

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Democratic)
 * 1)  Greenville County, South Carolina 100%
 * 2)  Marlboro County, South Carolina 100%
 * 3)  Hampton County, South Carolina 100%
 * 4)  Jasper County, South Carolina 100%
 * 5)  Reagan County, Texas 100%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Progressive)
 * 1)  Scott County, Tennessee 75.15%
 * 2)  Campbell County, South Dakota 74.93%
 * 3)  Avery County, North Carolina 72.69%
 * 4)  Hutchinson County, South Dakota 67.84%
 * 5)  Hamlin County, South Dakota 66.79%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Republican) Counties with the Highest Percent of Vote (Socialist; incomplete)
 * 1)  Zapata County, Texas 80.89%
 * 2)  Valencia County, New Mexico 77.25%
 * 3)  Kane County, Utah 75.40%
 * 4)  Clinton County, Kentucky 64.79%
 * 5)  Huerfano County, Colorado 63.36%

 * 1) Lake County, Minnesota 36.81%
 * 2) Crawford County, Kansas 35.28%
 * 3) Marshall County, Oklahoma 34.94%
 * 4) McCurtain County, Oklahoma 31.83%
 * 5) Okfuskee County, Oklahoma 30.90%

Results in major cities
Results of various cities within the top 100 municipalities by the 1910 United States census.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
1916 United States presidential election

The 1916 United States presidential election was the 33rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson narrowly defeated former associate justice of the Supreme Court Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate.

In June, the 1916 Republican National Convention chose Hughes as a compromise between the conservative and progressive wings of the party. Hughes was on the Supreme Court in 1912 and was not involved in the bitter politics of that year. He defeated John W. Weeks, Elihu Root, and several other candidates on the third ballot. While conservative and progressive Republicans had been divided in the 1912 election between the candidacies of incumbent President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt, they largely united around Hughes in his bid to oust Wilson. Hughes remains, as of today, the only person to have served as a Supreme Court justice and later been a major party's presidential nominee. Wilson was re-nominated at the 1916 Democratic National Convention, as was Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, both without opposition. Hughes's running mate was Charles W. Fairbanks, who had been Theodore Roosevelt's vice president in his second term.

The campaign took place against a background dominated by war — the Mexican Revolution and World War I. Although officially neutral in the European conflict, public opinion in the United States favored the Allied forces led by Great Britain and France against the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, due to the harsh treatment of civilians by the German Army and the militaristic character of the German and Austrian monarchies. Despite their sympathy for the Allied forces, most American voters wanted to avoid involvement in the war and preferred to continue a policy of neutrality. Wilson's campaign used the popular slogans "He kept us out of war" and "America First" to appeal to those voters who wanted to avoid a war in Europe or with Mexico. Hughes criticized Wilson for not taking the "necessary preparations" to face a conflict.

Although many saw Hughes as the favorite to win, Wilson after a hard-fought contest defeated him by nearly 600,000 votes out of about 18.5 million cast in the popular vote. Wilson secured a narrow majority in the Electoral College by sweeping the Solid South and winning several swing states with razor-thin margins. Wilson won California, the decisive state, by just 3,773 votes. Since the GOP was not as split as in 1912, Wilson did not have the same easy victory as he had four years earlier, losing his home state of New Jersey along with the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Marshall's home state of Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, West Virginia (although he still won an electoral vote from the state), and Wisconsin. However, Wilson still managed to win two states that he had lost in 1912 (Utah and Washington), and fully won California after having only obtained two out of 13 electoral votes from California in 1912.

Wilson became the first candidate to win election while losing both Pennsylvania and New York (Harry Truman and George W. Bush would later do the same). It was the first election since 1892 in which a Democrat was elected to a second term, and the first since 1832 in which a Democrat was elected to a consecutive second term. The United States entered the war in April 1917, one month after Wilson's second term began.

Democratic Party nomination
The 1916 Democratic National Convention was held in St. Louis, Missouri between June 14 and 16. Given Wilson's incumbency and enormous popularity within the party, he was overwhelmingly re-nominated. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall was also re-nominated with no opposition.

Convention
The 1916 Republican National Convention was held in Chicago between June 7 and 10.

A major goal of the party leaders was to heal the bitter split that ripped the party apart in 1912. Although several candidates were openly competing for the 1916 nomination — most prominently Senator Elihu Root of New York and Senator John W. Weeks of Massachusetts — the leaders wanted a moderate who would be acceptable to both factions.

They turned to Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who had been serving on the court since 1910 and had the advantage of not having publicly spoken about political issues in six years. Although he had not actively sought the nomination, Hughes made it known that he would not turn it down. He won the nomination on the third ballot. Former Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks was nominated as his running mate. Hughes remains, as of today, the only serving Supreme Court justice to be nominated for president by a major political party.

Candidates considered
The Progressive Party re-nominated former President Theodore Roosevelt.

For Vice President, Progressives nominated businessman John Parker of Louisiana, who had run an unsuccessful campaign. California Governor Hiram Johnson was suggested for renomination, and Raymond Robins, chairman of the party convention, was proposed, but both withdrew their names in favor of Parker.

However, Roosevelt telegraphed the convention and declared that he could not accept their nomination and would be endorsing Republican nominee Charles Evans Hughes for the presidency. Roosevelt turned down the Progressive nomination for both personal and political reasons. He was convinced that running for president on a third-party ticket again would merely give the election to the Democrats and had developed a strong dislike for President Wilson. He also believed Wilson was allowing Germany and other warring nations in Europe to "bully" and intimidate the United States.

Former U.S. Representative Victor Murdock of Kansas pushed for a ticket consisting of William Jennings Bryan and Henry Ford but nothing came of it. Some, such as National Committeeman Harold L. Ickes, refused to consider endorsing Hughes. There was some talk of replacing Roosevelt with Hiram Johnson or Gifford Pinchot. All those discussed refused to consider the notion, and by this point, some leaders such as Henry Justin Allen had started to follow Roosevelt's lead and endorsed Hughes. Various state parties, such as those in Iowa and Maine, began to disband.

Finally, when the Progressive Party National Committee met in Chicago on June 26, those in attendance begrudgingly endorsed Hughes; even those like Ickes who had vehemently refused to consider granting an endorsement to Hughes began to recognize that without Roosevelt the party had no electoral staying power. There had been a weak attempt to replace Roosevelt on the ticket with Victor Murdock, but the motion was defeated 31 to 15.

With Roosevelt refusing their nomination, the Progressive Party quickly fell into disarray. Most members returned to the Republican Party, but a substantial minority supported Wilson for his efforts in keeping the United States out of World War I.

Without a presidential nominee, many in the party, notably vice-presidential nominee John Parker and Bainbridge Colby, remained steadfast in their refusal to support Hughes. Parker desired the presidential nomination himself. Colby, while opposed to the endorsement of Hughes, now considered a Progressive campaign impractical and privately supported Wilson. It appeared likely for a time that another convention would be called in early August, until a conference held among the remaining representatives of the party in Indianapolis decided against it, while also narrowly voting against filling the vacancy that had been caused by Roosevelt's refusal to be placed on the ticket (though Parker remained the vice-presidential nominee). Electoral tickets would still be put in place where the Progressive Party remained organized in the hopes of electing enough electors so as to possibly hold the balance of power in a close contest between the Democratic and Republican candidates.

While running as the vice-presidential nominee, John Parker would endorse Woodrow Wilson for the presidency.

Other candidates
Eugene V. Debs and Charles Edward Russell declined to run for the nomination. Debs, who had served as the party's presidential nominee since its foundation, chose to run for a seat in the United States House of Representatives from Indiana's 5th congressional district. Allan Benson, a newspaper editor from New York, quickly came to dominate the field on a platform of his fervent opposition to militarism and proposal that all wars should be voted upon in a national referendum. Rather than a traditional nominating convention, the vote was conducted through a mail-order ballot, with Benson capturing 16,639 out of a total of 32,398 cast (to 12,264 for Maurer and 3,495 for Le Sueur). A vote for the vice-presidential nomination was jointly held with George Ross Kirkpatrick, a lecturer from New Jersey, winning the nomination 20,607 to 11,388 over Kate Richards O'Hare of Missouri.

Other candidates
The twelfth Prohibition National Convention assembled in Saint Paul, Minnesota on July 19. Before the convention a number of figures were considered potential nominees for the presidency, among them former Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan, former Governor of New York William Sulzer, former Governor of Massachusetts Eugene Foss, former Governor of Indiana Frank Hanly, former General Nelson Miles, and former Alabama Congressman Richmond Hobson; Sulzer and Hanly ultimately were the only two to actively campaign for the nomination. It was generally recognized early on that Hanly's nomination was favored with a supporter of his, Robert Patton, being named as permanent chairman of the convention. This culminated with the adoption of much of his program into the Party platform and his own nomination for the presidency, Hanly receiving 440 votes to Sulzer's 181. Ira Landrith, a Presbyterian minister from Tennessee and member of the Flying Squadron of America was nominated for the vice presidency after other names were withdrawn from contention before the first ballot.

General election
During the campaign, Edward M. House was Wilson's top campaign advisor. Hodgson says, "he planned its structure; set its tone; guided its finance; chose speakers, tactics, and strategy; and, not least, handled the campaign's greatest asset and greatest potential liability: its brilliant but temperamental candidate." The Democrats built their campaign around the slogan, "He Kept Us Out of War," saying a Republican victory would mean war with both Mexico and Germany. Wilson's position was probably critical in winning the Western states.

Charles Evans Hughes advocated greater mobilization and preparedness for war. With Wilson having successfully pressured the Germans to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare, it was difficult for Hughes to attack Wilson's peace platform.

Instead, Hughes criticized Wilson's military interventions in Mexico, where the U.S. was supporting various factions in the Mexican Revolution.

Hughes also attacked Wilson for his support of various "pro-labor" laws (such as limiting the workday to eight hours), on the grounds that they were harmful to business interests. His criticisms gained little traction, however, especially among factory workers who supported such laws. Hughes was helped by the vigorous support of popular former President Theodore Roosevelt, and by the fact that the Republicans were still the nation's majority party at the time.

Hughes made a key mistake in California. The 1912 split in Republican ranks remained a lingering issue, with two rival factions in California. Hughes decided to base his California campaign with the conservative Republican regulars instead of the Progressive faction. Hiram Johnson, the governor of California who had been Roosevelt's running mate in 1912, did endorse and speak for Hughes. However Johnson did not mobilize the Progressive faction and it saw Wilson as more of a true progressive. Wilson carried California by 3,773 votes (0.3%) and with it the Electoral College and the presidency.

Wilson's contingency plan had he lost
In the weeks prior to the election, Wilson began to worry that, were he to lose the race to Hughes, he would remain a lame duck until March 1917. For Wilson, this was problematic, given that the United States was likely on the eve of its entry into the First World War. Wilson, thus, privately floated a contingency plan: were Hughes to win, Wilson would immediately appoint Hughes secretary of state (a role which was, at the time, second-in-line to the presidency). Wilson and Vice President Marshall would both then resign, allowing Hughes to immediately become acting president, thereby avoiding a lengthy lame duck presidency. This plan was first revealed publicly two decades later in the memoirs of Robert Lansing, Wilson's secretary of state, who, under the plan, would have had to have resigned or been dismissed in order to allow Hughes to assume that office.

Results
The result was exceptionally close and the outcome remained in doubt for some time. Some New York newspapers declared Hughes the winner on Wednesday morning, including The World and The Sun, which erroneously published that six states (California, Idaho, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming) had voted for Hughes. The official gazette of the Kingdom of Serbia also declared him the winner on 16 November 1916.

A popular legend from the campaign states that Hughes went to bed on election night thinking that he was the newly elected president. When a reporter tried to telephone him the next morning to get his reaction to Wilson's comeback, someone answered the phone and told the reporter that "the president is asleep." The reporter retorted, "When he wakes up, tell him he isn't the president."

By Wednesday evening, Wilson had secured 254 electoral votes in the counting, needing either California or Minnesota to claim victory. Democrats declared victory in California on Thursday afternoon, and the California Republican Party conceded defeat that night.

Wilson was the first Democratic president to win a second consecutive term since Andrew Jackson in 1832. Vice-president Thomas R. Marshall also earned the distinction of becoming the first vice-president of any party elected to a second term since John C. Calhoun in 1828. As Calhoun had served as vice president under John Quincy Adams and was re-elected to serve under Andrew Jackson, Wilson and Marshall became the first incumbent ticket to win re-election since James Monroe and Daniel D. Tompkins in 1820.

Electoral results
The electoral vote was one of the closest in U.S. history – with 266 votes needed to win, Wilson took 30 states for 277 electoral votes, while Hughes won 18 states and 254 electoral votes. Wilson was the second of just four presidents in United States history to win re-election with a lower percentage of the electoral vote than in their prior elections, after James Madison in 1812, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944 and Barack Obama in 2012.

Wilson's popular vote margin of 3.1 percent was the smallest attained by a victorious sitting president since 1812 and retained that status until 2004.

The total popular vote cast in 1916 exceeded that of 1912 by 3,500,000. The large total vote was an indication of an aroused public interest in the campaign. It was larger in every section, notably in the East North Central section. Some of this was due to the extension of suffrage to women in individual states. In Illinois, for example, the total vote was one million greater than in 1912. It increased by more than 260,000 in Kansas, and in Montana, it more than doubled. Wilson's vote was 9,126,868, an increase of nearly 3,000,000. There was a gain in every section and in every state. Hughes, the nominee of the united Republican Party, polled more votes by nearly 1,000,000 than had ever been cast for a Republican candidate.

Among the third-party candidates, Benson's vote dropped to a little over half of what Eugene Debs had earned at the previous election, though this would still represent the best-ever showing of any Socialist candidate other than Debs. Hanly's performance would mark the last time the Prohibition Party exceeded one percent of the popular vote, with the party quickly declining into irrelevance after the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919.

To date this is the last presidential election in which North Dakota and South Dakota did not vote for the same candidate, with the only others being 1896 and 1912. This is the last time Illinois voted for a losing candidate until 1976, the last time Minnesota voted for a losing candidate until 1968, and the last time West Virginia voted for a losing candidate until 1952. It was the only time a Democrat was elected without winning West Virginia from the state's founding until 2008.

This was the last election in which the Democrats won New Hampshire until 1936 and the last in which the Democrats won Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming until 1932. This would also be one of four times in which the winning presidential candidate lost his home state including 1844, 1968, and 2016. This election and the 1968 election are the only elections ever where the winning presidential and vice presidential candidates lost each of their home states. Wilson was the last Democrat to win an election without carrying Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island (although he had previously won the latter two states in 1912). This was the first time since 1856 that Democrats won consecutive elections.

Source (Popular Vote):

Source (Electoral Vote):

Results by state
The key state proved to be California, which Wilson won by only 3,800 votes out of nearly a million cast. If Hughes had carried California and its 13 electoral votes, he would have won the election.

Although New Hampshire may not have been a deciding state in the election, the margin of victory for Wilson there was the second smallest ever recorded in an American presidential election at just 56 votes, behind Franklin Pierce's 25-vote victory in Delaware in 1852.

In some of the states carried by Wilson, particularly in the South, the popular vote margin was large. Wilson ran behind Hughes in New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, and in the East North Central section. His lead was not great in the West North Central, but was very large in the West South Central and Mountain as well as in the East South Central and South Atlantic sections. Half of Wilson's total vote was cast in the 18 states that he did not carry.

States that flipped from Democratic to Republican

 * Connecticut
 * Delaware
 * Illinois
 * Indiana
 * Iowa
 * Maine
 * Massachusetts
 * New Jersey
 * New York
 * Oregon
 * Rhode Island
 * Wisconsin
 * West Virginia

States that flipped from Republican to Democratic

 * Utah

States that flipped from Progressive to Republican

 * Michigan
 * Minnesota
 * Pennsylvania
 * South Dakota

States that flipped from Progressive to Democratic

 * California
 * Washington

Close states
Margin of victory of less than 1% (52 electoral votes):
 * 1) New Hampshire, 0.06% (56 votes)
 * 2) Minnesota, 0.10% (392 votes)
 * 3)  California, 0.38% (3,773 votes) (tipping point state)
 * 4) West Virginia, 0.94% (2,721 votes)
 * 5) Indiana, 0.97% (6,942 votes)

Margin of victory of less than 5% (77 electoral votes):
 * 1) North Dakota, 1.50% (1,735 votes)
 * 2) Delaware, 2.43% (1,258 votes)
 * 3) Oregon, 2.57% (6,726 votes)
 * 4) Connecticut, 3.15% (6,728 votes)
 * 5) New Mexico, 3.56% (2,375 votes)
 * 6) Missouri, 3.65% (28,693 votes)
 * 7) South Dakota, 3.90% (5,026 votes)
 * 8) Massachusetts, 3.93% (20,899 votes)
 * 9) Maine, 4.02% (5,475 votes)
 * 10) Washington, 4.25% (16,180 votes)

Margin of victory of between 5% and 10% (162 electoral votes):
 * 1) Rhode Island, 5.08% (4,464 votes)
 * 2) Kentucky, 5.41% (28,136 votes)
 * 3) Kansas, 5.86% (36,930 votes)
 * 4) Wisconsin, 6.59% (29,459 votes)
 * 5) New York, 7.02% (119,812 votes)
 * 6) Ohio, 7.67% (89,408 votes)
 * 7) Maryland, 8.02% (21,012 votes)
 * 8) Michigan, 8.04% (52,322 votes)
 * 9) Illinois, 9.23% (202,320 votes)

Results by county
Of the 3,022 counties making returns, Wilson led in 2,039 counties (67.47%). Hughes managed to carry only 976 counties (32.30%), the smallest number in the Republican column in a two-party contest during the Fourth Party System. Two counties (0.07%) split evenly between Wilson and Hughes. Although the Progressive Party had no presidential candidate (just candidates for presidential electors who were unpledged for president), they carried five counties (0.17%), whilst nine counties – 0.30 percent and the same as in 1912 – inhabited either by Native Americans without citizenship or disenfranchised African Americans failed to return a single vote. Wilson carried 200 counties that had never voted Democratic in a two-party contest prior to that time.

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Democratic)
 * 1)  Dillon County, South Carolina 100.00%
 * 2)  Hampton County, South Carolina 100.00%
 * 3)  Jasper County, South Carolina 100.00%
 * 4)  Tunica County, Mississippi 100.00%
 * 5)  Echols County, Georgia 100.00%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Republican)
 * 1)  Leslie County, Kentucky 91.55%
 * 2)  Sevier County, Tennessee 90.42%
 * 3)  Zapata County, Texas 89.17%
 * 4)  Jackson County, Kentucky 87.90%
 * 5)  Johnson County, Tennessee 87.33%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Other)
 * 1)  Lafourche Parish, Louisiana 59.38%
 * 2)  Glascock County, Georgia 53.79%
 * 3)  Paulding County, Georgia 53.52%
 * 4)  Fannin County, Georgia 51.29%
 * 5)  Iberia Parish, Louisiana 47.59%

Aftermath
The gains made by Wilson in this election were a novel phenomenon under the Fourth Party System. This shift of votes led some to believe that the Democratic Party might have the position of decided advantage in the election of 1920.