Whenever people in this forum want to emphasize the supposedly accidental nature of Wilson's victory in 1912, they point out that he got fewer votes than Bryan did in 1908--6,296,284 to Bryan's 6,408,984 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1908_United_States_presidential_election I have been familiar with this fact for years and have thought it could easily be explained by the fact that some of Bryan's more radical supporters weren't entirely without suspicions about Wilson's conversion to progressivism and voted for Debs as a protest vote--or else, even if they did consider Wilson the best of the three major candidates, figured that there was no harm in voting for Debs because Wilson was so likely to win anyway.
But here is an even more striking fact of which I was not aware until recently: TR and Taft combined in 1912 got fewer votes than Taft alone got in 1908! Taft got 7,678,395 votes in 1908 to 7,608,963 for Taft and TR combined in 1912. That was the figure that really surprised me. Clearly the lower vote totals for the three major candidates in 1912 compared to the two parties in 1908 cannot be explained solely by the increase in Debs' vote--it is hard to imagine many 1908 Taft voters supporting Debs!
It turns out that 1912 was indeed a low-turnout election. David Sarasohn explains it in The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era, p. 148: "Based on population increase, the admission of two new states, and the extension of suffrage to women in two others, Edgar E. Robinson has suggested an increase in the electorate of approximately one million from 1908 to 1912. Yet, the total vote increased by only 150,000, and in most states voter turnout dropped. Faced with an election already decided--gamblers offered 5 to 1 on Wilson--almost one million voters from both parties stayed home and another half million voted Socialist for the first time."
What are the implications of this low turnout for counterfactual history? Well, I think that for one thing it is another blow to the theory that Taft could have defeated Wilson one-on-one. Whether rightly or wrongly, Taft was regarded as a conservative by 1912 and surely some of the 1908 Bryan voters who stayed home or voted for Debs in 1912 in OTL would have voted for Wilson if Taft seemed to have a serious chance of winning. (There are of course all sorts of other reasons to think Taft could not have defeated Wilson one-on-one, such as the fact that Taft's unpopularity had led the Democrats to easily gain control of the House of Representatives in 1910--before the Taft-TR split-- and that Taft had clearly not become any more popular in the interim. Indeed, one of the reasons there was such a demand for TR to run was the belief that "Taft can't win.")
The implications for a one-on-one TR-Wilson race are less clear, Some small-p progressive voters who stayed at home or voted for Debs in OTL might be attracted by the "social justice" aspects of TR's campaign if they thought he had a chance of winning. OTOH, the Democrats endlessly stressed the way trust-promoters like George Perkins were backing TR, and warned that TR's plans to legalize and regulate trusts would mean that the trusts would really control the government that was supposedly regulating them--and this argument might sway some "Bryanite" stay-at-homes or Debs voters. And of course if TR does not succeed in patching up his difficulties with the Taft forces, some Taftites who didn't vote in 1912 (because Taft couldn't win anyway) might still not vote (because they disliked both candidates) or might even vote for Wilson out of hatred for TR (this actually happened in OTL in California where Hiram Johnson kept Taft off the ballot and many Taftites endorsed Wilson. https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...but-then-comes-the-twist.304100/#post-8637724) And if TR having been nominated by the GOP does manage to retreat from "radicalism" and reconcile the Taftites, then he is going to lose some "radicals" who voted for him in OTL--while other radicals who stayed home or voted for Debs might vote for Wilson, just as they would do in 1916. (Socialist defections to Wilson in 1916 were not due solely to the peace issue--they were also due to the increasing conservatism of Hughes.)
But here is an even more striking fact of which I was not aware until recently: TR and Taft combined in 1912 got fewer votes than Taft alone got in 1908! Taft got 7,678,395 votes in 1908 to 7,608,963 for Taft and TR combined in 1912. That was the figure that really surprised me. Clearly the lower vote totals for the three major candidates in 1912 compared to the two parties in 1908 cannot be explained solely by the increase in Debs' vote--it is hard to imagine many 1908 Taft voters supporting Debs!
It turns out that 1912 was indeed a low-turnout election. David Sarasohn explains it in The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era, p. 148: "Based on population increase, the admission of two new states, and the extension of suffrage to women in two others, Edgar E. Robinson has suggested an increase in the electorate of approximately one million from 1908 to 1912. Yet, the total vote increased by only 150,000, and in most states voter turnout dropped. Faced with an election already decided--gamblers offered 5 to 1 on Wilson--almost one million voters from both parties stayed home and another half million voted Socialist for the first time."
What are the implications of this low turnout for counterfactual history? Well, I think that for one thing it is another blow to the theory that Taft could have defeated Wilson one-on-one. Whether rightly or wrongly, Taft was regarded as a conservative by 1912 and surely some of the 1908 Bryan voters who stayed home or voted for Debs in 1912 in OTL would have voted for Wilson if Taft seemed to have a serious chance of winning. (There are of course all sorts of other reasons to think Taft could not have defeated Wilson one-on-one, such as the fact that Taft's unpopularity had led the Democrats to easily gain control of the House of Representatives in 1910--before the Taft-TR split-- and that Taft had clearly not become any more popular in the interim. Indeed, one of the reasons there was such a demand for TR to run was the belief that "Taft can't win.")
The implications for a one-on-one TR-Wilson race are less clear, Some small-p progressive voters who stayed at home or voted for Debs in OTL might be attracted by the "social justice" aspects of TR's campaign if they thought he had a chance of winning. OTOH, the Democrats endlessly stressed the way trust-promoters like George Perkins were backing TR, and warned that TR's plans to legalize and regulate trusts would mean that the trusts would really control the government that was supposedly regulating them--and this argument might sway some "Bryanite" stay-at-homes or Debs voters. And of course if TR does not succeed in patching up his difficulties with the Taft forces, some Taftites who didn't vote in 1912 (because Taft couldn't win anyway) might still not vote (because they disliked both candidates) or might even vote for Wilson out of hatred for TR (this actually happened in OTL in California where Hiram Johnson kept Taft off the ballot and many Taftites endorsed Wilson. https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...but-then-comes-the-twist.304100/#post-8637724) And if TR having been nominated by the GOP does manage to retreat from "radicalism" and reconcile the Taftites, then he is going to lose some "radicals" who voted for him in OTL--while other radicals who stayed home or voted for Debs might vote for Wilson, just as they would do in 1916. (Socialist defections to Wilson in 1916 were not due solely to the peace issue--they were also due to the increasing conservatism of Hughes.)
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