1908 United States presidential election in Indiana
Theodore Roosevelt Republican William Howard Taft Republican The 1908 United States presidential election in Indiana took place on November 3, 1908.[1] Between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Third Party System, elections in the state were always very close; although the state become more Republican when William Jennings Bryan’s free silver policy drove conservative Democrats to the Republican party for the following two decades and would lead to him to lose to William McKinley in 1896 and 1900.[2] However, until Alton B. Parker lost the state by thirteen points in 1904, Indiana’s strong Southern leanings meant its Democratic counties remained very loyal and the state remained much closer than the other “Lower North” states of Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.[3] For 1908, third-time Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan nominated, under the advice of future Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, former Indianapolis city solicitor John W. Kern as his running mate in an effort to capture this electorally crucial state that had not voted for a popular vote loser since 1848.[4] However, Republican nominee, Secretary of War William Howard Taft would nonetheless achieve the fourth consecutive Republican win in the state by the narrow margin of 1.49 percentage points.