1912 United States presidential election

A Punch cartoon by Leonard Raven-Hill, depicting the perceived aggression between Taft and Roosevelt.

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.

Cracks in the party began to show when Taft supported the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act in 1909.[3] The Act favored the industrial Northeast and angered the Northwest and South, where demand was strong for tariff reductions.[4] 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.[5]

Taft also fought against Roosevelt's antitrust policy.[6] Roosevelt distinguished "good trusts" from "bad trusts," which he had been lambasted for.[7] 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.[8] By 1910, the split within the party was deep, and Roosevelt and Taft turned against one another despite their personal friendship. 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.[9]

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.[10] James E. Campbell writes that one cause may have been a large number of progressive voters choosing third-party candidates over conservative Republicans.[11] 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."[12]

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."[13]

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.[14]

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.

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.[15][16]

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.[15]

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.[15]

Roosevelt broke with tradition and attended the convention, where he was welcomed with great support from voters.[17] 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.[18] 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."[19] 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.[19] Meanwhile, Taft decided not to campaign before the election beyond his acceptance speech on August 1.[20] 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.[15]

Candidates in this section are sorted by number of delegates won in the nomination race
Champ Clark	Oscar Underwood	Judson Harmon	Eugene Foss	Thomas Marshall
Speaker of the House from Missouri (1911–1919)	U.S. Congressman from Alabama (1897–1915)	Governor of Ohio (1909–1913)	Governor of Massachusetts (1911–1914)	Governor of Indiana (1909–1913)
Campaign	Campaign	Campaign		Campaign
LN: July 2, 1912 423 Delegates 427,938 votes	LN: July 2, 1912 84 Delegates 114,947 votes	LN: July 2, 1912 48 Delegates 128,633 votes	LN: July 2, 1912 36 Delegates 0 votes	LN: July 2, 1912 30 Delegates 0 votes
Simeon Baldwin	John Burke
Governor of Connecticut (1911–1915)	Governor of North Dakota (1907–1913)
Campaign	Campaign
LN: July 2, 1912 14 Delegates 0 votes	LN: July 2, 1912 10 Delegates 9,357 votes

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 (United States, 1912) 1912 Progressive Party ticket
Theodore Roosevelt	Hiram Johnson
for President	for Vice President
26th President of the United States (1901–1909)	23rd Governor of California (1911–1917)

The Progressive convention at the Chicago Coliseum, 1912

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.[15]

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 of America
Eugene V. Debs	Emil Seidel
for President	for Vice President
Indiana State Senator (1885–1889)	36th Mayor of Milwaukee (1910–1912)

Socialist candidates:

• Eugene V. Debs, former State Senator from Indiana
• Emil Seidel, Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Charles Edward Russell, journalist from Iowa

Eugene V. Debs's popular vote results were the highest for the Socialist party.

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.[24]

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.[25][26][27]

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.[28]

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.[24] The number of Socialists in the state legislatures increased from twenty to twenty-one.[29]

At a campaign stop in Milwaukee on October 14, John Flammang 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.[32] 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.[33]

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.[34] 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.[35] 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.[36][37]

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.[38][39]

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.[40] 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.[41]

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.[42]

In a plurality of 1,396 counties, no candidate obtained a majority.[46] Wilson won 1,969 counties but held a majority in only 1,237, less than Bryan had had in any of his campaigns.[45]

"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.[45]

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 2023, 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.[47]

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Democratic)

1. Greenville County, South Carolina 100.00%
2. Marlboro County, South Carolina 100.00%
3. Hampton County, South Carolina 100.00%
4. Jasper County, South Carolina 100.00%
5. Reagan County, Texas 100.00%

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)

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%

Counties with the Highest Percent of Vote (Socialist; incomplete)

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 by state
• 
  Map of presidential election results by county
• 
  Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote
• 
  Results by county, shaded according to percentage of the vote for Wilson
• 
  Results by county, shaded according to percentage of the vote for Taft
• 
  Results by county, shaded according to percentage of the vote for Debs
• 
  Results by county, shaded according to percentage of the vote for all others including Debs
• 
  A continuous cartogram of the 1912 United States presidential election
• 
  Cartogram shaded according to percentage of the vote for Wilson
• 
  Cartogram shaded according to percentage of the vote for Taft
• 
  Cartogram shaded according to percentage of the vote for all others

Roosevelt, hurting from his defeats, reviews his wounded lieutenants Munsey, Perkins and Dixon. From The Evening Star (Washington DC) Dec 10, 1912

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

• Bryan, William Jennings. A Tale of Two Conventions: Being an Account of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions of June, 1912, with an Outline of the Progressive National Convention of August in the Same Year (Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1912). online
• Chester, Edward W A guide to political platforms (1977) online
• Pinchot, Amos. What's the Matter with America: The Meaning of the Progressive Movement and the Rise of the New Party. (Amos Pinchot, 1912).
• Republican campaign text-book 1912 (1912) online
• Roosevelt, Theodore. Theodore Roosevelt's Confession of Faith Before the Progressive National Convention, August 6, 1912 (Progressive Party, 1912) online.
• Roosevelt, Theodore. Bull Moose on the Stump: The 1912 Campaign Speeches of Theodore Roosevelt Ed. by Lewis L. Gould. (UP of Kansas, 2008).
• Wilson, Woodrow (1956). John Wells Davidson (ed.). A Crossroads of Freedom, the 1912 Campaign Speeches. online
• Porter, Kirk H. and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds. National party platforms, 1840–1964 (1965) online 1840–1956