Why did William Howard Taft do so well in Utah and New York in 1912?

[darklordoftech]

He won New York in the primary against TR.

[H. Ross Peron]

Support of local party machinery/organizations presumably.

[Sumner 1868]

I'm not sure if I would agree Taft did well in NY. He only mustered 28% of the vote and did better in thirteen states. Do you mean why he did better than Roosevelt?

[darklordoftech]

I'm not sure if I would agree Taft did well in NY. He only mustered 28% of the vote and did better in thirteen states. Do you mean why he did better than Roosevelt?

Taft won a lot of counties in New York, and yes, I’m asking why he did better than Roosevelt.

[Podgy the Bear]

I always wondered why Taft won Utah in 1912 fairly comfortably (by 5 points over Wilson).  It had given Bryan 83% of the vote in 1896 when first admitted to the union but it moved to the Republicans rapidly after that.

I then checked on Wikipedia (these days, my go to source)--and there was quite a bit of referenced information on Taft's victory in Utah:

"Because Taft made no efforts to campaign, he lost easily in most states; however, in Utah, a powerful political machine under long-serving senator and Mormon Apostle Reed Smoot had been developed to counter the anti-Mormon "American Party", which had become the effective opposition to the Republicans in local elections and had elected mayors in Salt Lake City.   Combined with a very prosperous rural economy in both the farming and mining sectors, this produced strong loyalty among local Mormon communities to Taft, who was also supported by the local Mormon and non-Mormon press."

[Orser67]

UT makes sense, but it seems bizarre to me that Taft beat Roosevelt in the 1912 NY primary (especially by such a wide margin) when Roosevelt dominated the other primaries. It may have helped that Taft's VP and running mate, James Sherman, was from New York, but it seems unlikely that Sherman would be that huge of a factor.

Also, it's interesting that Taft won the primary in Roosevelt's home state and Roosevelt won the primary in Taft's home state.

[TDAS04]

Taft also performed well in Southern Idaho, almost carrying the entire state.  So in the case of Utah, it easily could have been a Mormon thing.

New York is curious, as Taft outperformed TR by not that much statewide, yet the county map looks lopsided.  Taft won much of Upstate, TR may not have carried a single county.  Apparently TR did better than Taft in NYC.

[Wazza]

Taft also won the Massachusetts Primary albeit by a small margin. The Republican Party in the Eastern United States was a bastion of the old guard Conservative wing in the early 20th century. Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, Redfield Proctor of Vermont, Orville Platt of Connecticut, Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. of Massachusetts and Elihu Root of New York are examples of more conservative Republicans who represented the Eastern US during the period. Conversely, Progressive Republicans tended to be dominant in the West and parts of the Midwest (Borah, Johnson, Lafollette, Norris, etc.). I remember reading an article from the 1924 election regarding LaFollette's split with the Conservative establishment and it talked about the divisions being between the "Conservative East and the radical West", which comes as a surprise to many who assume based off the political environment of the post-war Northeast that it has always been a relatively "liberal" or "left leaning" region of the country.

With Utah, it does look like religious bloc voting played a role with Mormons largely uniting behind the GOP ticket.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Taft also won the Massachusetts Primary albeit by a small margin. The Republican Party in the Eastern United States was a bastion of the old guard Conservative wing in the early 20th century. Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, Redfield Proctor of Vermont, Orville Platt of Connecticut, Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. of Massachusetts and Elihu Root of New York are examples of more conservative Republicans who represented the Eastern US during the period. Conversely, Progressive Republicans tended to be dominant in the West and parts of the Midwest (Borah, Johnson, Lafollette, Norris, etc.). I remember reading an article from the 1924 election regarding LaFollette's split with the Conservative establishment and it talked about the divisions being between the "Conservative East and the radical West", which comes as a surprise to many who assume based off the political environment of the post-war Northeast that it has always been a relatively "liberal" or "left leaning" region of the country.

With Utah, it does look like religious bloc voting played a role with Mormons largely uniting behind the GOP ticket.

New York also elected Senator James Wadsworth to the US Senate and he was one of the most Conservative members, opposing women's suffrage and the Food and Drug administration. He lost in 1926, in large part thanks to the votes of women and then went on to represent Rochester area in the House for many years usually winning around 70% of the vote. Upstate New York was very Republican during this time and as has been stated in other threads, and even for down state, UES had a Conservative Republican representing it in the US House as late as the 1956 elections. It is not surprising that upstate NY could outvote in a primary even back then. Though there was a large number of Republican middle class voters in New York City proper to say nothing of the large numbers of rich industrialists and old line aristocratic families in the UES, Midtown, Oyster Bay and similar "silk-stocking areas".

The Eastern states had organized political machines, a middle class dependent on industrialization and a Republican Party's whose divine mission was tariffs ever after and as long as the Democrats could be portrayed as the forces of agrarian radicalism and anti-industrial policy (read free trade), Republicans could unite a coalition of middle class (and poor for that matter) Yankees (strictly defined as I typically define it to pious New Englanders or New England transplants, plus Quakers/PA Germans hence the SE PA dominance) and just enough of everyone else to win the Northern Industrial states.

The further West and South you go, you have a smaller middle class, less industry and far more miners, farmers and loggers etc. Thus Populism and early Progressivism found its natural base in those two regions.

It was the New Deal, heavy unionization (preventing the GOP from cracking the working class vote) and rise in ethnic voting/generational-demographic change as well as the major middle class employment shifting away from industry towards government jobs, academia etc. This meant that the NE would become the more liberal region and the local GOP establishment would shift to the left economically to try and chase after it as such.

Meanwhile the South and West was developing a growing middle class, the Plains had shed most of its poor farmers leading to consolidation around big farms that we see today and the result of this was that the politics of this region moved to the right economically and this led the Democrats in the region to move right and try and chase after it.