Presidential election in the United States, 1904

‹  1900  •   •  1908 ›
30th presidential election
November 8, 1904
			Republican Party
			Theodore Roosevelt / Charles W. Fairbanks
			electors					336
			be right				7,630,457
									56.4%
			Democratic Party
			Alton B. Parker / Henry Davis
			electors					140
			be right				5,083,880
									37.6%
Election results by state
32 states   Roosevelt / Fairbanks						13 states   Parker / Davis
President of the United States
Before the election Theodore Roosevelt Republican Party						Elected Theodore Roosevelt Republican Party

The 1904 presidential election in the United States was held on November 8, 1904 . The Republican and incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt could clearly beat the Democrat Alton B. Parker .

Roosevelt was the first president to previously move from the post of vice president to office without election and to be re-elected in the following election. This was to be repeated three times: 1924 , 1948 and 1964 .

Candidates

Republican Party

Republican candidates:

• 

  President Theodore Roosevelt

• 

  Senator Mark Hanna

President Theodore Roosevelt had worked since 1902 to get the party under his control in order to be able to stand for a vote in 1904. Although there was a potential opponent in Mark Hanna , he died at the beginning of the election year, so that there was no longer any real opposition to Roosevelt within the party. He was unanimously nominated with 994 votes at the Republican Congress . Roosevelt was the first non-elected president to be put up for re-election by his party. He had been elected as Vice President at the side of his predecessor William McKinley four years earlier and had to take over the post of head of state himself after a fatal assassination attempt on McKinley in September 1901. Each of the four presidents in the history of the USA who had also taken office was denied nomination for their own party after the end of the current term of office.

In order to pacify the conservative wing of the party, the progressive Roosevelt left the party congress the choice of a vice-presidential candidate . Therefore, Senator Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana was nominated for this post. Roosevelt was rather skeptical about this, but he saw no benefit in making a substantial effort here to get a candidate who was more convenient to him nominated. As a running mate , the president preferred the former Congressman Robert R. Hitt or George Pardee , the governor of California . However, Pardee declined in advance because he preferred to remain governor. Fairbanks was then unanimously nominated at the party conference, as was Roosevelt.

Democratic Party

Democratic candidates:

• 

  Judge Alton B. Parker

• 

  MP William Randolph Hearst

• 

  Senator Francis Cockrell from Missouri

• 

  Former US Secretary of State Richard Olney

• 

  Former Wisconsin State Representative Edward C. Wall

• 

  Former Senator George Gray

• 

  John Sharp Williams MP from Mississippi

• 

  Former General Nelson Appleton Miles

Both the two-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and the former President Grover Cleveland declined to run. Alton B. Parker , then presiding judge of the New York Court of Appeal , was nominated by far the most promising candidate and with two thirds of the delegate votes. Unlike Bryan, a representative of the conservative party wing was again set up with Parker . His running mate , Senator Henry G. Davis of West Virginia , was 80 years old at the time of the election, making him the oldest candidate for the vice presidency ever to have been nominated by either of the major parties.

Socialist party

The Socialist Party of America ran for the first time with a presidential candidate in this election. As a very inhomogeneous association of local parties rooted in industrial cities, it was mainly supported by German and Finnish immigrants. The prominent socialist Eugene V. Debs was chosen as a candidate.

literature

• Donald Richard Deskins, Hanes Walton, Sherman C. Puckett: Presidential Elections, 1789-2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2010, ISBN 978-0-472-11697-3 , pp. 276-284 (= Chapter 32: Theodore Roosevelt's Election. ).

Result

Results by counties (the stronger the respective color, the greater the lead in each case)

candidate	Political party	be right		electors
		number	percent
Theodore Roosevelt	Republican Party	7,630,457	56.4%	336
Alton B. Parker	Democratic Party	5,083,880	37.6%	140
Eugene V. Debs	American Socialist Party	402.810	3.0%	0
Silas C. Swallow	Prohibition Party	259.102	1.9%	0
Thomas E. Watson	Populist party	114.070	0.8%	0
Charles H. Corregan	Socialist Labor Party	33,454	0.2%	0
Others		1,229	0.0%	0
total		13,525,002	100%	476

Web links

Commons : United States Presidential Election 1904  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files