The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections by Yanek Mieczkowski

The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections by Yanek Mieczkowski

Author:Yanek Mieczkowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis


“Sometimes I think I might as well give up… . There are so many people in the country who don’t like me,” he wrote. Taft felt that Roosevelt had betrayed him, and he persisted in the campaign to prevent his former friend from winning.

Roosevelt and Wilson were relatively close on the issues. Wilson called his version of progressivism “New Freedom” and took an antimonopoly stance. While both men favored an activist federal government, Wilson shied away from federal government planning and programs and was more sympathetic to states’ rights. Roosevelt’s New Nationalism, which he had first promulgated in 1910, called for a protective tariff as well as stronger intervention by the government to control corporations and protect labor, women, and children. But the two strains of progressivism were very similar.

The most tense moment of the campaign came in its last few weeks. On October 14, in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was on his way to give a speech when a crazed gunman shot him in the chest. The bullet lodged near his heart, but its path had been slowed by a spectacle case and a folded copy of the speech that Roosevelt had in his breast pocket. Roosevelt insisted on delivering the address, and the audience gasped as he pulled out the blood-drenched text. In a typical display of vim, he spoke for an hour and a half, but he had to take two weeks off from campaigning to recuperate. Out of respect for Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson suspended their campaigns as he convalesced.

Wilson proved to be an effective campaigner—eloquent, cogent, and even witty. While he restricted his campaigning primarily to the Northeast, Bryan went on the stump for him in the West, where he made a significant contribution to Wilson’s cause.

In the electoral college Wilson demolished his opponents. Roosevelt won 6states, while Taft won only Utah and Vermont. But in popular votes Wilson’s victory was not nearly as impressive. He was a minority president, winning only 41.9 percent of the popular vote. His total of 6,293,454 was less than Bryan’s 6,409,104 in 1908. Roosevelt came in second, a testimony to his popularity; it was the strongest showing of any third-party candidate in American history and was one of only two times that a third party won more than 20 percent of the popular vote. Taft trailed with the lowest share of the popular vote for any president seeking reelection.

The candidate of the Socialist Party, Eugene Debs of Indiana, made a respectable showing. Although he won no electoral votes, he did attract 900,000 popular votes, 6 percent of the total, the highest amount ever for a Socialist candidate and more than twice the 400,000 votes he had won in 1904 and 1908.

Although Wilson did not win a majority of popular votes, the support for himself and for Roosevelt’s Progressive Party constituted a mandate to proceed with progressive reform. Taft’s dreary showing, and the support received by Roosevelt and Debs, indicated that the electorate did not want conservative rule. Moreover, the Democrats won control of the Senate, so that they now ruled both houses of Congress.



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