Woodrow Wilson won the election of 1912, becoming president of the United States as the Democratic candidate.

Quick Scoop: What happened in 1912?

  • The winner of the election of 1912 was Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic governor of New Jersey.
  • He won a landslide in the Electoral College , taking 435 out of 531 electoral votes, even though he had only about 42% of the popular vote.
  • The race was unusual because the Republican vote split between:
    • Former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive “Bull Moose” candidate.
* Incumbent president William Howard Taft, the official Republican nominee.
  • A fourth major figure, Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs, won about 6% of the popular vote but no electoral votes.

Why this election is still a trending topic in history discussions

  • It is often cited in forum discussions and history debates as the classic example of a third-party candidacy (Roosevelt’s Progressive Party) splitting the vote and helping the opposing major party win.
  • Many commentators point out that Wilson likely would not have won so easily if Roosevelt and Taft had not divided the traditional Republican base.

Key numbers at a glance

  • Woodrow Wilson (Democratic): 435 electoral votes, about 6.3 million popular votes (roughly 42%).
  • Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive): 88 electoral votes, about 4.1 million popular votes (around 27%).
  • William Howard Taft (Republican): 8 electoral votes, about 3.5 million popular votes (around 23%).
  • Eugene V. Debs (Socialist): 0 electoral votes, about 900,000 popular votes (around 6%).

Mini “story” of the 1912 race

Imagine the 1912 election as a political drama: an unpopular sitting president (Taft), a popular former president breaking away to form a new party (Roosevelt’s Bull Moose), and a relatively new face, Woodrow Wilson, walking through the opening that split created. Wilson did not need a majority of Americans to vote for him; he only needed more than any single opponent, and the fractured Republican field gave him exactly that.

In many modern forum discussions, the election of 1912 is used as a cautionary tale about divided party coalitions and how they can hand victory to the other side, even when the divided side has more total supporters.

Bottom note: Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.