To quote an old post of mine:
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I have always thought that the war--if we leave aside the prosperity it brought to the US (an important caveat!)--may have been if anything a net minus for Wilson in 1916. Many German- and Irish-Americans thought Wilson was too pro-Entente. The temporary improvement in US-German relations after the
Sussex pledge and the worries about the inlfluence of hawks like TR and Root in a Hughes administration did mitigate this problem for Wilson but did not entirely eliminate it. See David Sarasohn,
The Party of Reform, pp. 228-230:
"Admittedly, Wilson did not suffer the kind of sweeping German and Irish apostasy that Democratic leaders had feared during the campaign. Nor were the losses universal; in some areas, such as St. Louis and Baltimore, German Democrats maintained their usual levels … But through much of the country, alienated ethnic Democrats, especially Germans, repudiated Wilson in numbers large enough to affect outcomes. "In the great majority of cases," reports Meyer Nathan on the Middle West, "Wilson either lost support among German Americans or did not gain support among them as substantially as he did among other voters."
"Looking at 110 midwestern counties with sizable German populations, Nathan found that in 44 of them Wilson ran worse in 1916 than he did in the three-sided contest of 1912, and in fifty-three he ran worse than Bryan had run in 1908 — at the same time that, in other counties, he was running ahead of all previous Democratic standards. These were counties that had been, in many cases, the backbones of Democratic strength in their area, counties where defeat or even narrow victory would be normally fatal to Democratic hopes statewide.
"Perhaps the most vivid example of Wilson's German defeats, and their costs, is provided by Wisconsin. The Democrats made a strong effort for the state, where they had elected a senator two years before and could count upon a strong appeal to labor, insurgent Republicans, and Milwaukee Socialists as well as the benign neutrality of La Follette. But, throughout the campaign, the warnings of rural German anger grew, and by election day the leaders knew the state was lost... traditionally an oasis of solid Democratic majorities in a Republican state, in 1916, German areas suddenly voted more Republican than the state as a whole.
"Democrats could count similar defections, with similar effects, in other states. New door in Minnesota, which Wilson lost by one-tenth of 1 percentage point the morning-after telegram from the state's Wilson volunteer chairman and simply, "Country German communities disappointing." He might have been thinking of Brown County, which had gone for Bryan in 1908 but now gave Wilson 31.6 percent, or Stearns, which had three times given the Commoner landslides (61.6, 61.3, and 56.8 percent) but now cast 54.4 percent of its votes for Hughes. Clifton Phillips notes German bolting from Wilson in Indiana, which he lost by less than I percent of the vote, and where one Democrat reported German ministers circulating anti-Wilson handbills. The Neu, York World suggested that German defections in the Fort Wayne area had hurt Wilson seriously, and the returns illustrate the point: Fort Wayne's county, Allen, one of the most German in the state, had voted thre times for Bryan, by increasing margins each time; now it went for Hughes, with a sharply increased Socialist vote....
"...The exception to Wilson's sweep of Ohio was what the
Cleveland Plain Dealer called "a surprising majority" for Hughes in Cincinnati's Hamilton County, where Wilson trailed the state ticket throughout the German wards.
"The defection of the urban Irish from the party of their fathers is more difficult to demonstrate. William O'Leary has argued that the Irish rebellion was insignificant, because Wilson carried the Irish wards and in fact ran better there than other Democratic presidenttial candidates had. But this is asking the wrong question. Democrats normally won (and needed, for any prospect of city or state victory) large majorities among the Irish, and for Wilson to run better in their wards than the aggressively pietistic Bryan or the hapless Parker would hardly be an indication of enthusiasm of very much use to him. In Chicago's 30h ward, the most Irish of the five Chicago wards O'Leary cites, Wilson did indeed win, with 58.5 percent of the vote. But the Democratic candidates for senator in 1914 and 1918 won 64 percent and 65.4 percent, respectively, and in elections for city clerk—a position in which the organization took a particular interest —the 30th ward went Democratic by 74.2 percent in 1913 and 77.5 percent in 1917.
"Wilson's difficulties appeared most vividly, and worse than had been expected, in New York City. With the treaty with Tammany, Democratic leaders had hoped for an old-time Democratic majority in the city, with the
New York World estimating a margin of 97,000. Instead, Wilson carried the city by less than 40,000, despite huge majorities in the Jewish districts. One source of his problems was evident: in the assembly districts with the highest Irish and German populations, the Democratic percentages dropped off notably from the assembly elections of the year before.
"The immediate reaction of many Wilsonians, who in the manner of reformers tended to vest their opposition with limitless reach and power, was that Tammany had knifed the president. Certainly, given the history of Wilson-Murphy diplomatic relations over the past four years, numerous Tammany tigers felt a coolness toward the Princetonian. But the machine defended itself persuasively. “The President got the top vote here in this city, as against a lesser vote for our own candidates, and he got a big vote," one New York leader wrote McAdoo. "Tammany could not control the Germans of its own party, whom Frank Cobb [editor of the
World] called every day agents of the Kaiser if they dared vote for any other save Wilson." Tammanyites also cited Wilson's similar difficulties across the river, in Frank Hague's heavily Irish and German Hudson County...."
One other point is that the war issue might have hurt Wilson among urban Progressives who were pro-British. Harold Ickes was to claim many years later that "I would have been for Wilson in 1916 if I hadn't been persuaded that his re-election would mean that England and France and all they had meant to our civilization might go to the dogs for all that we might do." (Ickes, *Autobiography of a Curmudgeon* [1937], p. 184)
(It has to be said, though, that the War was not the only problem Wilson had with Irish and German Catholics--his positions on Mexico and to a lesser extent on the Philippines probably also hurt him with Catholic voters.)
All in all, as i said, I think the War (leaving aside its effect on prosperity) cost Wilson votes--though surely not as many as the Democrats feared. But probably the War had little effect one way or the other on the Mountain and West Coast states, including California. The fighting seemed very far away there, ethnic votes were not as numerous as in the East, and progressivism rather than peace was the major issue. This was recognized at the time: "While the East has been thinking in terms of the European war," explained Colorado Progressive leader Ed Costigan after the election, "the Progressives of the West have considered domestic peace and justice of greater importance, and have voted accordingly." Arthur Sears Henning,
Chicago Tribune political correspondent wrote "coming directly from the far west to New York City, I was struck immediately by the fact that I read next to nothing about Wilson having 'kept us out of the war.' The great conflict abrorad is much more real to the people of the Atlantic seaboard than to the prairie states." Sarasohn, p. 220.
But of course as I noted the War did bring prosperity to the US. In 1913-14 Republicans had some success in blaming the recession on Wilson's "anti-business" policies and the Underwood Tariff. This argument faded as prosperity returned. When Hughes in 1916 claimed the US was living in a "fool's paradise" and needed higher tariffs to counter a flood of imports from Europe once the war ended, he got little response because he was in effect conceding that for now the economy was prosperous. So how well Wilson would do in 1916 without the war might depend on how rapidly and completely the US would recover from the recession.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/1916-presidential-election-if-wwi-didn’t-happen.507900/#post-21787955
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To that post I would add that the idea that progressivism, not peace, was the key to Wilson's victory in 1916--especially in the West-- is not new. It was recognized at the time. Besides the sources I quoted in the above post, I could cite Wiliam Allen White, who supported Hughes but nevertheless criticized the conservatism of his campaign: "He talked tariff like Mark Hanna. He talked of industrial affairs like McKinley, expressing a benevolent sympathy, but not a fundamental understanding. He gave the Progressives of the West the impression that he was one of those good men in politics—a kind of a business man's candidate, who would devote himself to the work of cleaning up the public service, naming good men for offices, but always hovering around the status quo like a sick kitten around a hot brick!"
https://books.google.com/books?id=Tl01AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA6-PA6 Secretary of the Interior Lane, a Californian, wrote after the election: "The result in California turned, really as the result in the entire West did, upon the real progressivism of the progressives. It was not pique because Johnson was not recognized. No man, not Johnson nor Roosevelt, carries the progressives in his pocket. The progressives in the East were Perkins progressives who could be delivered. The West thinks for itself. Johnson could not deliver California. Johnson made very strong speeches for Hughes. The West is really progressive. . . ."
https://books.google.com/books?id=8mwoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA227 And of course, in California as elsewhere, Hughes' opposition to the Adamson Act hurt him with organized labor.
If 1916 has any meaning for 1912, it is that the Republicans would have a hard time beating Wilson if they were perceived as the conservative party--as they certainly would be if their candidate was Taft (even though Taft was hardly the reactionary that Democrats and Progressives claimed he was).