1908 U.S. presidential election

1908

William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt's hand-picked successor, defeated William Jennings Bryan, who lost his third run for the presidency.

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The story

On November 3, 1908, Republican William Howard Taft defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan, winning 321 electoral votes to 162 and 51.6 percent of the popular vote to Bryan's 43.0 percent. Taft, a heavy, genial Ohio lawyer and judge, had served as governor of the Philippines and as Roosevelt's secretary of war. Roosevelt, keeping his 1904 promise not to run, picked Taft and campaigned for him as the man to continue his reforms. James S. Sherman of New York ran for vice president.

Bryan, the Nebraska orator who had lost in 1896 and 1900, won the Democratic nomination a third time. He attacked trusts and called for stronger regulation, but voters credited the Republicans with recovery after the Panic of 1907, and Taft carried every Northern state except a few in the West. Once in office Taft broke more trusts than Roosevelt had, but his support for a high tariff and his firing of conservationist Gifford Pinchot split him from Roosevelt and the party's progressive wing.

Why it mattered

Taft's quarrels with progressives pushed Roosevelt back into politics and led to the three-way 1912 race.
His administration sent the Sixteenth Amendment, which allowed a federal income tax, to the states in 1909.
Bryan's third loss ended his runs for president, though he became Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state.

Sources

United States presidential election of 1908 Britannica
1908 Electoral College Results National Archives

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