1908 United States presidential election
31st quadrennial U.S. presidential election / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The 1908 United States presidential election was the 31st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1908. Republican Party nominee William Howard Taft defeated three-time Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan.
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483 members of the Electoral College 242 electoral votes needed to win | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 65.7%[1]  0.2 pp | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Presidential election results map. Red denotes those won by Taft/Sherman, blue denotes states won by Bryan/Kern. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt honored his promise not to seek a third term (for him, a second full term), and persuaded his close friend, Taft, to become his successor. With Roosevelt's support, Taft won the presidential nomination at the 1908 Republican National Convention on the first ballot. The Democratic Party nominated Bryan, who had been defeated twice previously, in 1896 and 1900, by Republican William McKinley.
Bryan, part of the more liberal or progressive wing of the Democratic Party, ran a vigorous campaign against the nation's business elite. But even so, he suffered the worst loss of his three presidential campaigns in his percentage of both the popular and electoral vote. Taft won 51.6% of the popular vote and carried most states outside of the Solid South. Taft's triumph gave Republicans their fourth straight presidential election victory. The Republican Party lost the presidency four years later to the Democrats, due to a party split. Two third-party candidates, Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party and Eugene W. Chafin of the Prohibition Party, each took over 1% of the popular vote.