Who would you have voted for--Dem primaries???

[Nym90]

The Hart/Donna Rice scandal didn't break until 1987 though, when he was the early front-runner for the 1988 nomination.

[Nym90]

Waay too simplistic to say that all of Roosevelt's vote would have gone to Taft. Roosevelt was a Republican, but a pretty liberal one, while Taft was much more conservative. A pretty good portion of Roosevelt's vote would have gone to Wilson, and he almost certainly still would have won if Roosevelt hadn't been a candidate. Taft was not held in high regard by the voters in 1912.

Now, if Roosevelt had been the GOP nominee instead of Taft, then Roosevelt quite possibly would have won as he would have won the great majority of Taft's votes. The GOP didn't want to dump the incumbent president off of the ticket, though.