In the 1912 presidential election (see Part 1) Democrat Woodrow Wilson, with 42 percent of the popular vote and 436 of 531 electoral votes, defeated Progressive Theodore Roosevelt (27%), incumbent President Republican William Howard Taft (23%), and Socialist Eugene V. Debs (6%). The U.S. population in 1912 was 95 million; today it is 314 million. The DJIA was 88 in 1912; it is 13,000 today. Total campaign spending in the 1912 presidential election: about $40 million in today’s dollars. Total presidential election campaign spending a century later: about $2.6 billion.
Here is a sample of day-after election coverage in the Star-Telegram:
On the day after the election, the election had pushed the Balkans but not the Baptists off the front page. (And the rooster overlay? The rooster was a symbol of the Democratic Party back then.)
Third-party candidate Roosevelt ran strongly, better than the incumbent president. The 1912 election was the last in which a candidate who was not a Republican or a Democrat finished second in either the electoral or popular vote.
In Tarrant County, as in the nation as a whole, Roosevelt polled better than Taft.
This editorial reminds us that a century ago the world was still very much wired: telegraph and telephone. Radio would not be used to broadcast election returns until 1920.
This cartoon by Star-Telegram artist Jay Plangman depicts Roosevelt and Taft under a haystack of Wilson ballots.
Then, as now, retailers tied their products to current events. Here a gaggle of Uncle Sams is unanimous in voting for “good old Guckenheimer.”
Friends don’t let friends vote drunk.