United States presidential election in Utah, 1904

United States presidential election in Utah, 1904
November 8, 1904

 
Nominee Theodore Roosevelt Alton B. Parker Eugene V. Debs
Party Republican Democratic Socialist
Home state New York New York Indiana
Running mate Charles W. Fairbanks Henry G. Davis Benjamin Hanford
Electoral vote 3 0 0
Popular vote 62,452[lower-alpha 1] 33,413 5,767
Percentage 61.41% 32.86% 5.67%
President before election

Theodore Roosevelt
Republican

 Elected President

Theodore Roosevelt
Republican

The 1904 United States presidential election in Utah was held on November 8, 1904, throughout all forty-five contemporary states. Utah voters chose three representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Background

In its first presidential election during its statehood year, Utah – with its large reserves of silver – had voted five-to-one for Democrat/Populist William Jennings Bryan, who ran on a platform of monetizing silver. However, with a revived economy, Utah moved much closer to the national mainstream in the ensuring 1900 election, as pre-statehood Republican Party hostility to the dominant LDS church gradually disappeared after the outlawing of polygyny in 1890.[1]

In between Utah’s second and third presidential elections, newly elected but unseated senator and Mormon apostle Reed Smoot went much further towards reversing the nineteenth-century hostility of the Republican Party to the Latter Day Saints. At a time when most traditional Protestant congressmen were opposed to Smoot being seated because religious influence was feared,[2] Mormon prophet and LDS Church President Joseph F. Smith said explicitly that members of the LDS Church should in political matters obey their consciences. Smoot – although a Republican – had been targeted by both major parties in the two years between his election by the Utah Legislature in 1902 and the 1904 presidential campaign, but he corresponded consistently with incumbent president Roosevelt.[3]

Smoot’s work was one factor allowing Roosevelt to sweep twenty-six of Utah’s twenty-seven contemporary counties and carry the state by 28.55 percentage points, which even in the largest landslide since the beginning of widespread popular voting for presidential electors made Utah 9.73 percentage points more Republican than the nation at-large. Another was that Parker himself was hostile to Mormon polygyny,[4] still another was the popularity in the West of Roosevelt’s conservation and trust-busting policies.[5]

Roosevelt’s percentage of the popular vote and margin would be bettered by no Republican in Utah until Dwight D. Eisenhower’s re-election in 1956.[6]

Results

United States presidential election in Utah, 1904[7]
Party Candidate Running mate Popular vote Electoral vote
Count % Count %
Republican Theodore Roosevelt of New York Charles Warren Fairbanks of Indiana 62,452 61.41% 3 100.00%
Democratic Alton Brooks Parker of New York Henry Gassaway Davis of West Virginia 33,413 32.86% 0 0.00%
Socialist Eugene Victor Debs of Indiana Benjamin Hanford of New York 5,767 5.67% 0 0.00%
Total 101,632[lower-alpha 2] 100.00% 3 100.00%

Results by county

County Roosevelt# Roosevelt% Parker# Parker% Debs# Debs% Write-ins# Write-ins% Total votes cast[8]
Beaver 869 58.17% 593 39.69% 32 2.14% 1,494
Box Elder 2,400 66.76% 1,151 32.02% 44 1.22% 3,595
Cache 4,008 56.89% 2,948 41.85% 89 1.26% 7,045
Carbon 1,224 65.38% 508 27.14% 140 7.48% 1,872
Davis 1,657 56.42% 1,255 42.73% 25 0.85% 2,937
Emery 905 56.67% 583 36.51% 109 6.83% 1,597
Garfield 679 70.14% 252 26.03% 37 3.82% 968
Grand 262 57.21% 165 36.03% 31 6.77% 458
Iron 741 58.72% 442 35.02% 79 6.26% 1,262
Juab 1,493 48.32% 1,206 39.03% 391 12.65% 3,090
Kane 399 79.64% 102 20.36% 0 0.00% 501
Millard 1,001 59.23% 683 40.41% 6 0.36% 1,690
Morgan 492 57.28% 315 36.67% 52 6.05% 859
Piute 358 48.12% 228 30.65% 158 21.24% 744
Rich 439 64.65% 240 35.35% 0 0.00% 679
Salt Lake 20,665 65.10% 8,389 26.43% 2,691 8.48% 31,745
San Juan 135 78.49% 36 20.93% 1 0.58% 172
Sanpete 3,829 66.65% 1,741 30.30% 175 3.05% 5,745
Sevier 1,725 59.10% 930 31.86% 264 9.04% 2,919
Summit 2,232 57.87% 1,358 35.21% 267 6.92% 3,857
Tooele 1,289 63.44% 639 31.45% 104 5.12% 2,032
Uintah 753 50.40% 630 42.17% 111 7.43% 1,494
Utah 6,490 59.15% 4,243 38.67% 239 2.18% 10,972
Wasatch 1,042 60.79% 656 38.27% 16 0.93% 1,714
Washington 718 48.38% 761 51.28% 5 0.34% 1,484
Wayne 310 53.26% 251 43.13% 21 3.61% 582
Weber 6,337 62.59% 3,108 30.70% 680 6.72% 10,125
Totals62,45261.41%33,41332.86%5,7675.67%57[lower-alpha 3]0.06%101,632

References

  1. ↑ Balmer, Randall and Riess, Janet (editors); Mormonism and American Politics (Religion, Culture, and Public Life), pp. 135-137 ISBN 0231540892
  2. ↑ Perry, Luke and Cronin, Christopher; Mormons in American Politics: From Persecution to Power, p. 52 ISBN 1440804087
  3. ↑ Perry and Cronin; Mormons in American Politics, p. 54
  4. ↑ Murdock, Dr. Everett E.; From Washington and Adams to Hillary and Trump: The Stories behind the Story of Every U.S. Presidential Election, p. 120 ISBN 0923178317
  5. ↑ Menendez, Albert J.; The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004, p. 36 ISBN 0786422173
  6. ↑ Dave Leip’s U.S. Election Atlas; Presidential General Election Results Comparison – Utah
  7. ↑ "1904 Presidential General Election Results – Utah". U.S. Election Atlas. Retrieved 23 December 2013.
  8. ↑ Robinson, Edgar Eugene; The Presidential Vote; 1896-1932 (second edition); pp. 223-224 Published 1947 by Stanford University Press

Notes

  1. ↑ Robinson‘s The Presidential Vote has a figure of 62,446 votes, but the county votes sum to 62,452
  2. ↑ The overall vote total includes 57 write-in votes not tabulated by counties
  3. ↑ These write-in votes were not separated by county
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