The Presidential Election of 1916, Part IV, Why Was the 1916 Election So Close?

A Premature Announcement

Most Republicans realized their 1912 split had elected Wilson and were determined not to fragment the party again, and Hughes had enough Progressive credentials to bring back most of those who had followed T.R. off  the reservation. He won all four states east of the Rockies that the Progressives had carried in 1912.

Hughes ran very strong in the northeast and the industrial tier of the Midwest. This was an area that had the most populous states and Hughes flipped all the states won by Wilson in these areas in 1912, except New Hampshire and the aforementioned Ohio. This included a large block of 112 electoral votes from  only three states: New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.

In the 1914 Congressional and State elections Republicans nation-wide experienced the traditional midterm election bounce-back by the losing side which helped strengthen state level committees. Consequently, Hughes also did well in the closely contested states, winning nine of 15 states where the margin of victory was less than five percent.

Final Results, Wilson in Blue, Hughes in Red (270 to Win)

The impact of all these effects made Hughes formidable in the Electoral College, even though President Wilson – who received 2.8 million more votes than in 1912 – won the popular vote. Absent the Republican disarray in Ohio, and that state's diversified demographics, he might have been president after all.

Sources: We adapted this series from several sources we should credit here—the Miller Center of the University of Virginia,  the American Presidency Project of the University of California at Santa Barbara, 270 To Win,  OurCampaigns.com,  and Gallup.com.