Woodrow Wilson won.
That’s the short answer to the question of who won president in 1912, but honestly, the "how" and the "why" are way more interesting than the name itself. If you look at the raw numbers, Wilson—a former Princeton professor who hadn't been in politics all that long—landed a massive electoral landslide. He took 435 electoral votes. His closest rival, Theodore Roosevelt, only got 88. Poor William Howard Taft, the actual sitting president at the time, ended up with a measly 8.
But these numbers are a total lie.
They suggest a mandate that didn't really exist. In reality, Wilson won because the Republican Party basically decided to set itself on fire. It was a three-way (actually four-way, if you count the Socialists) knife fight that changed American politics forever. You had an incumbent president, a former president coming back for vengeance, and a scholarly newcomer all vying for the same chair. It was messy, it was personal, and it’s the reason the 20th century turned out the way it did.
The Brutal Breakup of Taft and Roosevelt
To understand who won president in 1912, you have to understand the drama between William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt. They used to be best friends. Roosevelt had hand-picked Taft to be his successor in 1908, thinking Taft would carry on his "Square Deal" progressive legacy.
He didn't.
Taft was more conservative, more legalistic, and—in Teddy's eyes—way too cozy with the "Old Guard" Republicans. By 1912, Roosevelt was so annoyed that he decided to do something no former president had successfully done: he challenged the sitting president of his own party for the nomination.
The 1912 Republican National Convention in Chicago was basically a riot. Roosevelt actually won the majority of the new primary elections, but the party bosses controlled the delegates. They gave the nomination to Taft. Roosevelt was furious. He didn't just walk out of the convention; he took his entire following with him and started his own party.
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Enter the Bull Moose
When a reporter asked Roosevelt if he felt healthy enough for a third-party run, he said he felt "as strong as a bull moose." The name stuck.
The Progressive Party, better known as the Bull Moose Party, was born out of pure spite and raw idealism. This is where the 1912 election gets wild. You now had two Republicans on the ballot. One was the official nominee (Taft) and the other was the most popular man in America (Roosevelt).
While they were busy screaming at each other, the Democrats saw an open door. They nominated Woodrow Wilson. Wilson wasn't even the favorite at the Democratic convention—it took 46 ballots for him to finally clinch the nomination. But once he had it, he knew he just had to stay out of the way while the Republicans split their own vote.
The Night Teddy Roosevelt Was Shot
You can't talk about who won president in 1912 without mentioning the Milwaukee assassination attempt. It sounds like a movie script. On October 14, 1912, a man named John Schrank shot Roosevelt in the chest as he was leaving a hotel to give a speech.
Most people would go to the hospital. Not Teddy.
The bullet passed through his steel eyeglass case and a 50-page manuscript of his speech, which slowed it down enough that it didn't hit his heart. It lodged in his rib. Roosevelt stood up, coughed into his hand to see if he was spitting blood (he wasn't), and decided he was fine to keep going. He went to the auditorium and told the crowd, "Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
He spoke for nearly 90 minutes with a bleeding hole in his chest.
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This moment defined the election's energy, but it didn't change the math. Even though Taft and Wilson both suspended their campaigning while Roosevelt recovered, the damage to the Republican base was already done. The vote was fractured beyond repair.
The Election Results: A Fluke of Math?
When the smoke cleared on election night, the map looked like a sea of Democratic blue. Wilson swept the South and picked up wins in almost every Northern state.
- Woodrow Wilson: 6.3 million votes (41.8%)
- Theodore Roosevelt: 4.1 million votes (27.4%)
- William Howard Taft: 3.5 million votes (23.2%)
- Eugene V. Debs: 900,000 votes (6.0%)
Look at those percentages. Wilson won with only 41% of the popular vote. In almost any other year, that's a losing number. But because Roosevelt and Taft split the remaining 50% of the center-right and progressive voters, Wilson coasted into the White House.
Even Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate, had a record-breaking year. He didn't win any states, but he pulled nearly a million votes. People were desperate for change. They were tired of the "trusts" (monopolies), they wanted better labor laws, and they were tired of the same old political machines.
Why the 1912 Election Matters Today
This wasn't just about who won president in 1912; it was about the death of one era and the birth of another.
First, it changed the Democratic Party. Before Wilson, the Democrats were largely seen as the party of the "losing side" of the Civil War. Wilson brought a brand of "New Freedom" progressivism that started the long, slow shift of the party toward being the vehicle for federal reform.
Second, it killed the Bull Moose movement. Roosevelt proved that a third-party candidate could beat a major party nominee (he beat Taft), but he also proved they couldn't actually win the whole thing. Since 1912, no third-party candidate has come even close to Roosevelt's 88 electoral votes. It solidified the two-party system we're basically stuck with now.
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Third, we got the 16th and 17th Amendments right around this time. The 1912 election cycle pushed the federal income tax and the direct election of senators into the mainstream. Whether you love or hate the modern IRS, you can trace its DNA back to the progressive fever of 1912.
What You Can Learn From This Mess
If you're looking for the "so what" of the 1912 election, it's that personality usually trumps policy in American history. Roosevelt didn't have a massively different platform than the other progressives, but he had the "Bull Moose" energy. Taft had the better legal mind but the charisma of a wet paper bag. Wilson had the intellectual high ground but felt cold to the average voter.
When a party splits, the other side wins. Every time.
If you want to dive deeper into this specific moment in time, I'd highly recommend checking out the Library of Congress digital archives for the 1912 campaign posters. They are fascinating. You can also look into the "New Nationalism" vs. "New Freedom" debates—they explain the fundamental disagreement over how much power the government should actually have over big business.
To wrap this up, the answer to who won president in 1912 is Woodrow Wilson, but the real story is how the Republican Party broke itself apart and allowed a minority-vote winner to reshape the American government for the next eight years.
Practical Steps for History Buffs
- Visit the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site: This was Roosevelt's home in New York. It’s basically a museum dedicated to the man who blew up the 1912 election.
- Read "The Heirs of Jefferson" or "The Bully Pulpit" by Doris Kearns Goodwin: If you want the gritty details of the Taft-Roosevelt friendship and its subsequent explosion, there isn't a better source.
- Check your local archives for 1912 ballots: Many state libraries have digitized these. It’s wild to see the four different party options listed and realize how close the country came to a completely different political trajectory.
Ultimately, 1912 was the year America decided it wanted to be a global, industrial power with a strong central government. Wilson was the one who steered the ship, but Roosevelt and Taft were the ones who built the engine—and then fought over the steering wheel until they crashed.