1912 United States presidential election

The 1912 United States presidential election was a 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson unseated incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft in addition to defeated former President Theodore Roosevelt, who ran under the banner of the new Progressive or "Bull Moose" Party. This is the near recent presidential election in which the second-place candidate was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. This also sustains the nearly recent election where a former president ran after leaving office. it is for most recent election to date in which four candidates received over 5 percent of the vote.

Roosevelt served as president from 1901 to 1909 as a Republican, & Taft succeeded him with his support. Taft's actions as president displeased Roosevelt, and Roosevelt 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 assist 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, and Taft. 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. With little chance of victory, Taft conducted a subdued campaign based on his platform of "progressive conservatism." Debs claimed the three candidates were financed by trusts and tried to galvanize support behind his socialist policies.

Wilson took advantage of the Republican split, winning 40 states and a large majority of the electoral vote with just 41.8% of the popular vote, the lowest support for any President after 1860. Wilson was the first Democrat to win a presidential election since 1892 and one of just two Democratic presidents to serve between 1861 the American Civil War and 1932 the onset of the Great Depression. Roosevelt finishedwith 88 electoral votes and 27% of the popular vote. Taft carried 23% of the national vote and won two states, Vermont and Utah. He was the first Republican to lose the Northern states. Debs won no electoral votes but divided up 6% of the popular vote, which supports the highest ever for a Socialist candidate as of 2022. With Wilson's decisive victory, he became the first presidential candidate to receive over 400 electoral votes in a presidential election.

Nominations

For the first time, numerous convention delegates were elected in presidential preference primaries. Progressive Republicans advocated primary elections as a way of breaking the dominance 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 domestic state of Wisconsin, but Taft won a major victory in Roosevelt's domestic state of New York and continued to rack up delegates in more conservative, traditional state conventions.

However, on March 28, Roosevelt issued an ultimatum: if Republicans did non nominate him, he would run as an independent. 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 condition one-quarter of the delegates when they would contribute nothing to a Republican victory.

388 delegates were selected through the primaries and Roosevelt won 281 received, 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 as 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 any of them.

Roosevelt supporters criticized the large amount of delegates coming from areas the Republicans would non win, with over 200 delegates coming from areas that had not been won by a Republican since carpetbaggers left, or the four delegates that came from the territories which didn't vote in the general election. However, Roosevelt had rejected an try 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, apart from for four, voted for McGovern.

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 sorting of a new party committed "to the advantage of all the people." This would later come to be call as the Progressive Party. Roosevelt announced that his party would produce its convention in Chicago and that he would accept their nomination whether offered. Meanwhile, Taft decided not to campaign before the election beyond his acceptance speech on August 1. Warren G. Harding exposed Taft's form 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 format to secure Taft's nomination.

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 receive the two-thirds majority required to win.

Clark's chances were hurt when Tammany Hall, the effective New York City Democratic political machine, threw its support slow him. The Tammany endorsement caused William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic presidential candidate and leader of the party's progressives, to undergo a change against Clark. Bryan shifted his support to reformist Governor of New Jersey Woodrow Wilson and decried Clark as the candidate of Wall Street. Wilson had consistently finishedin balloting.

Wilson had nearly assumption 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.

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 self-employed person candidate for president which Roosevelt accepted although he asked 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 include 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 "]

Socialist candidates:

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 increase 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 or situation. 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.