The Solid South was really bad for Southern presidential politics

[Mikestone8]

What makes you think Wilson couldnt have won based in Virginia? He was perceived as a Southerner during the campaign. Being from NJ didnt change that.

He would have had to spend  fighting Underwood for southern support, and would probably have been enough weaker in the north (having been President of Princeton and Governor of NJ gave him a broader appeal) for Champ Clark to win the nomination.

Had he been nominated, it probably wouldn't have mattered in November. He would get the core Democratic vote, which in 1912 is all he would have needed.

[Mikestone8]

Emphasis:

Not sure I uinderstand what the map signifies.

If it's supposed to be a situation where the Republicans managed to stay united in 1912, then it can't happen without massive changes well before Wilson becomes a candidate. If the fact of his running from Virginia rather than NJ  has not changed anything on the Republican side (and there's no obvious reason why it should have) the electoral map of 1912 won't look anything like that, and in fact probably won't differ much from OTL's, save that one or two New England States might go to Taft instead of Wilson. 

[Mikestone8]

That's only the map if every Roosevelt supporter switches to Taft, which is rather unlikely.

Indeed. For my money the only difference TR made was providing a "home" for Republican Progressives more than half of whom would otherwise have defected to Wilson. He saved them from having to hold their noses and vote for a Democrat. 

It's rather how 1920 might have gone had WJ Bryan decided that Cox was unacceptable for some reason, and launched an independent campaign. He would have collected a lot of votes from people who'd been Democrats in 1916, but who were brassed off after the Wilson years and OTL switched to Harding. In such a situation, the latter's popular vote would have been a lot less than OTL, and might even have been less than the combined Bryan/Cox votes - though of course Harding would still have swept the Electoral College.

[Mikestone8]

/quote]
Exactly.  I've tried this before with 1912, and that's what I got.  My ideal electoral map, by the way.
Here is also the electoral vote:
Republican- 379
Democratic- 152
Now, I didn't specify candidates because this is assuming either Roosevelt or Taft got the GOP nomination and the party stayed united behind whichever one it would have been.

IOW, if 1912 wasn't 1912.

Your first assumption is ok, but you need a PoD not much later than 1909 for the second to be conceivable.

[Mikestone8]

It's not certain if those, who voted TR would automatically vote for Taft.

This is assuming they did.  Much of the reason Wilson won was because Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote.  (Much like Nixon's first election in 1968 owed itself in part to Wallace and Humphrey splitting the Democratic vote.)

Well it has to be wondered if many Dixiecrats would vote for Humphrey, "The Happy Warrior". I mean, the Deep South had already ditched the Dems in 1964, and 1960 showed that both Republicans and faithless electors could win Southern states.

Wallace's intervention may even have helped Humphrey.

Had the Wallace vote in Texas gone to Nixon instead, Humphrey could not have carried that state, and of course the five Wallace states would also have gone to Nixon. It is of course conceivable that one or more northern states might have switched the other way (had Wallace voters there chosen Humphrey over Nixon) but by no means certain.

[Mikestone8]

Of course, in all but six of the Humphrey states his vote was less than the combined votes for Nixon and Wallace. Of the six, two were Humphrey and Muskie's home states, while in a third, NY, the Humphrey vote exceeded the Nixon/Wallace votes by less than half of one percent.

In the South, Texas was the only state in which Humphrey attained 33% (he actually got 41.4 there, only two percentage points ahead of Nixon), which sounds as though Southern whites were abandoning the Democratic Party in droves, and disagreed only about where to go. So in a straight fight it is unlikely that HHH could have got many of Wallace's Southern votes.

I agree that things might have been different in the North, where Wallace's removal might make Humphrey competitive in states like Ohio and Illinois, but without Texas he has only 166 electoral votes, so needs to find 104 from somewhere - and that's a tall order.