.gif){kind=small} | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 County Results
Taft 40-50% 50-60% 60-70%
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Elections in Oregon |
|---|
 |
The 1908 United States presidential election in Oregon took place on November 3, 1908. All contemporary 46 states were part of the 1908 United States presidential election. State voters chose four electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.
Polls always said that Oregon, which had voted Democratic only once over twelve presidential elections since statehood,[a] would ultimately be easily retained by Taft.[1] Despite differences with the state GOP, a New York Times opinion poll continued to show a Taft victory as certain,[2] although The Washington Post was much less certain.[3] Ultimately, however, Taft would repeat Roosevelt's feat of sweeping every county in Oregon, but his winning margin was less than half as large as that by which Alton Brooks Parker had been defeated in 1904.
Bryan had previously lost Oregon twice to Republican William McKinley in both 1896 and 1900.
Oregon had been earlier in the 1900s solidified as a one-party Republican bastion, which it would remain at a Presidential level apart from the 1910s GOP split until Franklin D. Roosevelt rose to power in 1932,[4] and apart from a very short New Deal interlude at state level until the “Revolution of 1954”. Democratic representation in the Oregon legislature would never exceed fifteen percent during this period except for the above-mentioned 1930s interlude,[5] and Republican primaries would become the chief mode of competition.[6]
The Beaver State's few Democrats pledged themselves to Bryan – who had been the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry any of the state's counties – in June.[7] In contrast, Senator Jonathan Bourne wanted incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt to run for effectively a third term;[8] however once it was clear that Taft would be the GOP nominee Bourne campaigned for him vigorously in spite of his history as a “silver Republican” who backed Bryan in 1896.[9]
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
- ^ ‘Hitchcock Poll Says Taft: Claims Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado’; New York Times, September 25, 1908, p. 4
- ^ ‘Republicans Figure on a Sweep for Taft: Party's Latest Reports Give Its Candidate 27 States and 305 Electoral Votes’; New York Times, October 22, 1908, p. 4
- ^ Starek, Fred; ‘Bryan Gaining, but Taft Ahead: Republicans on the Defensive to Hold Their Ground’; The Washington Post, October 18, 1908, p. 1
- ^ Burnham, Walter Dean; ‘The System of 1896’, in Kleppner, Paul (editor), The Evolution of American Electoral Systems, pp. 176-179 ISBN 0313213798
- ^ Schattschneider, Elmer Eric; The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America, pp. 76-84 ISBN 0030133661
- ^ Murray, Keith; ‘Issues and Personalities of Pacific Northwest Politics, 1889-1950’, The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 3 (July 1950), pp. 213-233
- ^ ‘Oregon Goes for Bryan: Delegates Instructed to Stay with Him to the End’; New York Times, June 10, 1908, p. 2
- ^ ‘Bourne Says Roosevelt: Oregon Senator Starts for Chicago Still Predicting Stampede to President’; New York Times, June 13, 1908, p. 2
- ^ Schlup, Leonard; ‘Republican Insurgent: Jonathan Bourne and the Politics of Progressivism, 1908-1912’; Oregon Historical Quarterly, vol. 87, no. 3 (Fall, 1986), pp. 229-244