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United States presidential election, 1908 |
‹ 1904  1912 › |
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| United States presidential election, 1908 |
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| November 3, 1908 | ||||
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| Nominee | William Howard Taft | William Jennings Bryan | ||
| Party | Republican | Democratic | ||
| Home state | Ohio | Nebraska | ||
| Running mate | James S. Sherman | John Worth Kern | ||
| Electoral vote | 321 | 162 | ||
| States carried | 29 | 17 | ||
| Popular vote | 7,678,395 | 6,408,984 | ||
| Percentage | 51.6% | 43.0% | ||
 Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Bryan/Kern, Red denotes those won by Taft/Sherman. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. |
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The United States presidential election of 1908 was held on November 3, 1908. Popular incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt, honoring a promise not to seek a third term, persuaded the Republicans to nominate William Howard Taft, his close friend and Secretary of War, as his successor. Having badly lost the 1904 election with a conservative candidate, the Democrats turned to two-time nominee William Jennings Bryan, who had been defeated in 1896 and 1900 by Republican William McKinley. Despite his two previous defeats, Bryan remained extremely popular among the more liberal and populist elements of the Democratic Party. Despite running a vigorous campaign against the nation's business elite, Bryan suffered the worst loss in his three presidential campaigns, and Taft won by a comfortable margin.
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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 E. Hughes and U.S. 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 voters held a primary among uninstructed candidates for delegate. During early 1908, the only two Republican contenders running nationwide campaigns for the presidential nomination were William H. Taft and 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 2/11/1908. 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 Sen. Robert M. LaFollette, and Pennsylvania elected a slate that supported Sen. Philander C. Knox.
Republican candidates
 Senator Joseph B. Foraker of Ohio |
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The 1908 Republican Convention was held in Chicago from June 16 to June 19. Prominent Republican candidates included House Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon of Illinois, Charles Evans Hughes of New York, Leslie M. Shaw of Iowa and Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, but William Howard Taft, the Secretary of War, prevailed with the backing of outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt. Taft was nominated with 702 votes to 68 for Knox, 67 for Hughes, 58 for Cannon, 40 for Fairbanks, 25 for LaFollette, 16 for Foraker, 3 for President Roosevelt, and one abstention (source: Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris, Convention Decisions and Voting Records, p. 174).
Representative James S. Sherman of New York received the vice-presidential nomination.
| Vice Presidential Ballot | |
| James S. Sherman | 702 |
|---|---|
| Edward F. Murphy | 77 |
| Curtis Guild | 75 |
| George L. Sheldon | 10 |
| Charles W. Fairbanks | 1 |
The 1908 Democratic Convention was held in Denver from July 7 to July 10. Despite a challenge by Minnesota governor John Albert Johnson, two time previous nominee William Jennings Bryan quickly won the overwhelming support of his party.
| Presidential Ballot | Vice Presidential Ballot | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| William Jennings Bryan | 892.5 | John W. Kern | 1002 |
| George Gray | 50.5 | ||
| John A. Johnson | 46 |
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. 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, losing almost all the Northern states to Taft and losing the popular vote by eight percentage points. This would be Bryan's last campaign for the presidency; however, 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.
(46 States participated, as Oklahoma had joined the Union the year before)
| Presidential candidate | Party | Home state | Popular vote | Electoral vote |
Running mate | Running mate's home state |
Running mate's electoral vote |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Pct | |||||||
| William Howard Taft | Republican | Ohio | 7,678,395 | 51.6% | 321 | James Schoolcraft Sherman | New York | 321 |
| William Jennings Bryan | Democratic | Nebraska | 6,408,984 | 43.0% | 162 | John Worth Kern | Indiana | 162 |
| Eugene Victor Debs | Socialist | Indiana | 420,793 | 2.8% | 0 | Benjamin Hanford | New York | 0 |
| Eugene Wilder Chafin | Prohibition | Illinois | 254,087 | 1.7% | 0 | Aaron Sherman Watkins | Ohio | 0 |
| Thomas Louis Hisgen | Independence | Massachusetts | 82,571 | 0.6% | 0 | John Temple Graves | Georgia | 0 |
| Thomas Edward Watson | Populist | Georgia | 28,822 | 0.2% | 0 | Samuel Williams | Indiana | 0 |
| Other | 15,550 | 0.1% | – | Other | – | |||
| Total | 14,889,261 | 100% | 483 | 483 | ||||
| Needed to win | 242 | 242 | ||||||
Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1908 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 28, 2005).
Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).
 Taft-Sherman postcard |
 Taft campaign postcard |
 Collier's magazine cover |
 Humorous postcard |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: United States presidential election, 1908 |
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