Utah Presidential Elections 1856-1952

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 24, 1956, Nos. 1-4

UTAH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1896-1952

BY FRANK H. JONAS AND GARTH N. JONES

IN observing voting habits in Utah politics, it has become axiomatic to say that as the nation goes, so goes the state. For example, one observer in 1940 stated that "voting in Utah since statehood has been mainly along national lines." Omitting 1896, he summarized that "from 1900 to 1916, the state voted Republican; and from 1932 to 1940, Democratic." He noted, howlican; and from 1932 to 1940, Democratic." He noted however, that "in 1912, though the United States elected Woodrow Wilson, the state remained Republican."

To bring these sweeping summaries up-to-date, one must add that the state continued to vote with the nation from 1940 to 1952, Democratic from 1940 to 1948, and Republican in 1952.

Voting statistics in Utah elections for the president and the vice-president of the United States from 1896 to 1952, presented here for the first time, with percentages showing the margins between the two major parties, as well as the results for third parties, reveal that there have been two significant deviations from this pattern. In 1896 William Jennings Bryan, although losing the presidency to William McKinley, the Republican candidate, by less than one percentage point, overwhelmed his opponent in Utah by winning 82.7% of the vote. By 1900 Utah had slid barely over into Republican ranks, Bryan's percentage having dropped to 48.1% and McKinleys having increased from 17.2% in 1896 to 50.7% for his second term. In the nation McKinley received 52.3%, while Bryan dropped to 43.4%. By 1908, the third time Bryan tried for the presidency, he had dropped to 39.1% in the nation but still managed to secure 43.4% of the Utah vote.

In 1904, Alton B. Parker, the Democratic candidate for the presidency, secured only 32.8% of the Utah vote and 37.6% of the nation's popular vote. It is evident that Bryan had a personally popular following in Utah beyond the strength of the Democratic party generally. Throughout the period from 1896 to 1912 Utah elected only Republican governors and Republican state administrations.

In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt swept the state with the high percentage of 61.4. In 1908 Taft received 56.2% of the Utah vote. In 1912 Utah remained with Taft, although his percentage in the state dropped to 37.4, while the once popular Roosevelt dropped to 21.5%. For the presidency Woodrow Wilson glided past both Roosevelt and Taft, who had become bitter political enemies. Including the vote for third party candidates on the national ticket, Wilson received only 38.5% of the total popular vote in the nation, while Roosevelt received 25.2% and Taft 21.3%. Utah's pluarality of 37.4% for Taft hardly followed the national result in this election, although the state did remain consistently with the Republican ticket. Together Taft and Roosevelt secured almost 60% (58.9) of the Utah vote.

Although complete analyses for the two exceptions to the pattern that Utah follows the nation are lacking, some reasons may be advanced to account for them. Between 1890 and 1900 Utah was undergoing a change in political and economic character. Utah's economic life, dominated by the Mormon Church and its doctrines and practices, was submerged in the dominating capitalistic pattern in the country as a whole and in the entire Western world. At best, Mormon economic life had not developed much beyond that prevalent in the United States during the 1830's. It had been influenced greatly by the idealism of a communal form which emerged at various places in Western nations, and then colored by the authoritarianism of an Old Testament theocracy, and, finally, made possible by the free land and isolation of the American frontier.

The Mormon Church became capitalistic in the 1890's. It was almost solely responsible for beginning and developing the sugar beet growing and sugar manufacturing industry. Several high Church officials had entered the mining field, a form of economic life denied previously by the Church administration to the members.

The main body of L.D.S. Church membership and the majority of its leaders had been Democratic before 1890. Gradually through the influence and activity of several strong leaders, Reed Smoot, George Q. Cannon, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith, Francis Lyman, John Henry Smith, among others, it became Republican.

The silver platform of the Democratic party, with the Populist party joining forces with it in the 1896 election, together with the traditional Democratic voting habits in territorial days, accounted for the high Bryan vote among the Mormons. The Mormon Church had already borrowed money in the eastern market. The non-Mormon members of the Republican party and the former members of the anti-Mormon Liberal party, organized in 1869 to fight the Mormon Church in elections, were influenced by the silver issue, which in a sense, was only a symbol for the entire mining interests of the state, since silver is mined only in conjunction with other metals. Non-Mormon and Mormon interests were merged in the common issue of silver and then in that of the tariff, which was to take on added meaning for the Mormons through their numerous participations in sheep and cattle raising.

In spite of the efforts of western mining interests, the Republican party came into power in 1896 on a platform opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world. Finding little interest abroad, particularly in England, the American government soon abandoned any attempt to bring about such an agreement. The gold standard was solidly entrenched in the nation's economy and identified with the current prosperity. Silver continued as a symbol in Utah politics until the elections of 1932 and the Silver Purchase Act of 1934, with some pressure group representatives and politicians raising their voices, often with tongue in cheek, for a double monetary standard. The tariff remained as a basic issue in Utah politics until 1932, and after that reappeared in other forms of protectionism or federal aid. The Republican party inherited this trend, and dominant Mormon and non-Mormon elements with identical economic interests acknowledged the inheritance and associated themselves with the Republican party.

Then, too, the state and particularly the officialdom of the Mormon Church succumbed from 1896 to 1900 to the booming nationalism and expansionism. This was one of those cosmic tendencies which sweep national leaders in the wake of a popular tide which no man seems capable of changing and into which are swept even leaders against their own convictions. The Mormon Church was finally swimming with the stream of history, instead of trying to turn the clock back to ancient ways or to realize an idealistic form of isolated communal life, which had been out of step with the times and had run against the tide.

Milton Merrill, in his dissertation on the political career of Reed Smoot, puts the result of the state abandoning the Bryan heresies in 1900 in a more realistic political style. The reversal, Merrill reports from his evidence, was attributed to the dominant Church. He states that it was commonplace among politicians and editors that the "Republican National Committee, operating under the astute direction of Mark Hanna, had made a deal with its president Lorenzo Snow." Merrill further states that:

The quid pro quo of the deal was never fully specified, nor the charges corroborated by substantial evidence, but they were repeated in all parts of the country and quite generally believed in Utah. Perry Heath, their First Assistant Postmaster General and Secretary of the National Committee, was reported to be the intermediary. He is said to have offered the Church assurance that there would be no constitutional amendment directed against polygamy, or adverse legislation otherwise. In return the Church would bring Utah into the Republican column, and wield as much influence as possible in the same direction in surrounding states. The disappearance of Bryan's 1896 majority, a total shift of 53,000 votes, was incontrovertible evidence of Mormon Church political control, in the opinion of the critics. Defenders of the Church pointed to the Republican margin of 1895, when Heber M. Wells, Republican candidate for governor, had almost the identical margin he secured in 1900. Moreover, the Church leaders, whose political views were known, had been gold standard men in 1896 and had been properly appalled at the silver sweep.

The Taft vote in 1912, also attributed to the Mormon Church, is otherwise a little more difficult to account for. Utah had been kept in the Republican ranks from 1902 to 1912 principally by the political leadership of Reed Smoot, with President Joseph F. Smith of the Mormon Church at his side. Republicanism and Mormonism in Utah during this period were hardly to be disassociated.

Utah had finally slipped into the Republican column in 1900 and 1902, in both years by slim margins. This was achieved, Merrill states, by the cooperative effort of all the diverse elements included in the Republican party, aided "slightly," he adds, "by certain non-partisan forces in the Mormon Church."

Without explaining what he meant by "non-partisan forces in the Mormon Church," he proceeds by saying that the Kearns- Smoot feud seriously threatened this limited advantage. In the following account there is a strong hint as to the reason for the break between Smoot and Roosevelt and for Smoot's and the Mormon Church's support of Taft:

When Kearns in 1904, smarting and seething from his intra-party defeat, left the Republican ranks and formed the American party, the immediate future of the Grand Old Party in Utah was not auspicious. It was in such circumstances that Smoot, aided by his loyal and capable assistants, demonstrated his quality as a politician. His program was to hold enough Gentiles within the Republican party to win elections. He also believed that his responsibility required the annihilation of the American party, with a consequent return of threefourths of its membership to the Republican fold. It is fortunate for his political career that he viewed his assignment in these larger terms. Just as Gentile-Mormon unification was being achieved the Republican party was shattered by the Roosevelt-Taft struggle. A Gentile-Mormon division in addition to a progressive-standpat split would have thoroughly wrecked the party for years in Utah.

Most differences between national and local election results, when these are opposite in terms of the success of a party, can be explained usually by factors in local politics. The Republican party in Utah was in trouble from 1902 to 1912 after it had succeeded in winning the majority of the electorate in 1900 and 1902. Statistics in the national elections from 1890 to 1895, when Utah was still a territory and elected only a territorial representative to Congress, reveal that the anti-Mormon Liberal party vote went over to the Republican party. The story of politics in the years from 1890 to 1902 is the joining of strong antior non-Mormon segments in the Liberal party with those portions of the People's party, the Church party, who were persuaded or directed by Church leadership to identify themselves with the Republican party. When Kearns left the regular Republican party organization, he drew off some of the non-Mormons from Republican ranks. In the meantime, Smoot was solidifying himself with the national Republican leaders, including principally President Theodore Roosevelt, to whom more than to any one person is attributed the fact that Smoot was able to retain his Senate seat after he had been under fire from a Senate investigating committee from 1903 to 1907.

Smoot not only solidified himself with important elements in the national Republican party organization, but he made every effort to wean non-Mormon elements into the Utah party ranks. The Catholic Kearns not only feuded with the Mormon Smoot, he was also at odds with the Protestant George Sutherland. Sutherland probably had no great liking for either Smoot or Kearns, for he, like his two rivals in the party, was sparring for power. Sutherland did not bolt the party, however, and instead, he went along with Smoot. Smoot used the patronage game and his influence with President Roosevelt to win Sutherland adherents, and politically speaking, Sutherland himself.

It is doubtful if Smoot had too much affection for President Roosevelt. Smoot wanted to run for the Senate in 1900, but he was dissuaded from his course by vice-president Hobart, Kearns reportedly had made a deal also with President Lorenzo Snow of the Church for Mormon support. He failed to make a similar deal with Snow's successor, Joseph F. Smith, and this failure caused his break with the Church and Smoot, who in 1902 became United States Senator. Reportedly Roosevelt had also been one to dissuade Smoot from seeking this high office at an earlier date. After he became Senator, Smoot knew that he had to win Roosevelt's support in order to remain in Washington, and he knew he had to maintain control of the Republican party in Utah to keep Roosevelt and Republican support in Washington.

By 1908 affection for President Roosevelt had increased to the point that Rudger Clawson, a member of the Quorum of Twelve and subsequently for many years its president, considered the "close link between the President of the United States and the President of the Church ... a miracle," and "a miracle that meant much to the Church of God."

President Joseph F. Smith, using the medium of the Improvement Era, as he did on several occasions, to express the official position of the Church on politics, ordered the editor "to go the limit in the support of the Republican party because that party had been loyal to the Church, particularly during the Roosevelt administration." Smith declared further that "our people must be true to their friends."

Smoot, however, did not remain loyal to his great friend, Theodore Roosevelt; neither did President Joseph F. Smith.

The 1912 election came at a time when the American party was taking its last political breath. Smoot thought in terms of party regularity; he could not afford to introduce at this time another break into the Utah Republican party organization, particularly at a moment when a serious local break was being patched up by Mormons and non-Mormons alike. Joseph F. Smith, in a long editorial in the Improvement Era instructed the Saints to vote for Taft. He stated that:

no responsible citizen who has investigated the political situation, with a view to learning the true status of the claims set forth by the various political parties, can in any way justly find fault with the present administration. President William H. Taft has met the just needs of the people and the economic demands of the country with steadfastness and wisdom . . . Should the people call him once again to the presidential chair, it is not likely that they will regret it, but on the contrary will find their action wise, sensible and sound.

Smoot was by personal inclination a straight party man, and local politics, in terms of his own interests as a politician, dictated that he remain one.

After the 1912 election Utah consistently followed national trends in presidential elections. There were some deviations during the off-year congressional elections, but these, as well as the differences between the state and national elections, when Utah produced comparable pluralities for president and vicepresident to those for the nation as a whole, can be reviewed better when the election figures for state offices will have been recorded at a later date.

In addition to the election of a Republican governor, Heber Wells (in 1895), when the state overwhelmingly voted for Bryan for president in 1896, and to that of William Spry, a Smoot and Taft Republican, when Roosevelt out-distanced Taft in the final national elections and Wilson won the presidency, Utah elected a Democratic governor in 1924 when the entire national ticket and all other state elective officers remained Republican, and a Republican governor in 1948 when all other elective offices, both national and state, went Democratic.

Third party candidates on the national ticket have never received much support from Utah voters. Eugene Debs, perennial candidate for president of the Socialist party, appeared on the ballot five times, in the years 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and finally in 1920. Beginning with a paltry .107% of the vote in 1900, he descended to a mere .086% in 1908 and reached his high of 8% in 1912. A. L. Benson, Socialist candidate in 1916, did not fare better with 3.1% of the Utah vote. Debs lost ground for his party in 1920, and Norman Thomas, who succeeded Debs as the perennial Socialist candidate, was hardly more successful. Thomas was a candidate in the years from 1928 to 1944, reaching a high of slightly less than 2% of the vote in 1932. The Socialist-Labor party entered the balloting in 1916 and persented only an electoral ticket, securing a meagre .101% of the vote.

Communists have been on the national ticket in the four elections from 1928 to 1940. They reached their high in Utah in 1932 with less than one-half of one per cent (.455), but fell to their second highest figure in 1936 with only .128%. These two discouragingly low figures, high for the Communists, coincided with the only two elections, 1932 and 1936, in which they secured a gubernatorial candidate by petition on the ballot.

Socialism of any kind has never gained a foothold in Utah. During the emergence of socialist parties in the nation, Utah was still primarily an agrarian state with no large urban centers. Mining communities offered some fertile ground for the planting of socialist seeds, but many of these soon became ghost towns. Other factors, old country traditionalism, the influence of the Catholic and Mormon churches, reform legislation to secure safety and health of the miners, and even some enlightened company policies tended to take the wind out of the socialist and communist sails. Any new movement would have had to penetrate the conservative ideology and middle class social structure of the state.

Utah did follow the nation in giving Robert M. LaFollette of the Progressive party 20.8% of the vote in 1924, the largest percentage ever given to a third party candidate. The Democrats received only 29.8%. It was the Progressive party vote that was to go over into the Democratic ranks in 1928 and in 1932 when the Democrats received 45.8 and 56.5 per cent of the vote, respectively. The Republican vote remained relatively consistent from 1924 to 1932, with Coolidge receiving 77,149 of the popular vote in 1924; Hoover 94,688 in 1928; and Hoover again 84,588 in 1932. In this period the Democrats increased their totals from 46,479 in 1924 to 116,502 in 1932. The Socialists had voted with the Progressives in 1924, but in 1932 both voted with the Democratic party.

Another third party result is of interest to Utah citizens because of the religious climate in the state. Mormons accept a principle called the Word of Wisdom which prohibits them from drinking alcohol in any form. The Utah electorate never supported the Prohibition party. It came on the ballot in 1900, when it secured approximately two-tenths per cent of the vote, and appeared again in 1912, when it raised its percentage almost to a bare five-tenths. In 1916, when it even failed to put up an electoral ticket, it attracted little attention. Senator Reed Smoot did not become interested in the prohibition issue until after his close call to hold his seat in 1914. William Jennings Bryan similarly became belatedly interested in the issue. Only when it became politically expedient, did the politicians get on the band wagon. The Republican party picked up the issue in Utah during this period and kept it close to its bosom, going down with it in 1932, even when many Mormon officials voted for repeal of the eighteenth amendment.

Other third parties have drawn little interest from the electorate. In 1900 the Peoples party nominated the same candidate as the Democrats. The Independence party in 1908 drew less than one per cent (.086) of the electorate to the polls.

Actually there have been three different progressive parties on the ballot. The Roosevelt Progressive party broke up in 1916, securing only 111 votes in Utah. LaFollette's Progressive party never survived, on a national scale, the death of its leader. In 1948 another Progressive party, Communist inspired, with Henry A. Wallace for president and United States Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho for vice-president, made a ripple in Utah political circles, securing less than one per cent of the vote.

In 1948 the names of the vice-presidential candidates began to appear separately on the Utah ballot. No special significance need be attached to this fact and to the different results for presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Republican vice-presidential candidate, Earl Warren, received almost two thousand more votes than Thomas Dewey, but Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Alben Barkley, fell almost two thousand votes behind President Truman. There might be some correlation between the relative popularity of these candidates in the state, due to their personal visits. Warren made an excellent impression when he opened his campaign in Salt Lake City, as did President Truman when he rode with Democratic leaders and workers through the state and spoke in the Salt Lake Mormon Tabernacle. Dewey worsened his chances by his appearance. Some state Republican leaders detested him; they said he was arrogant and egotistical. Barkley did not appear in 1948. In 1952 President Eisenhower secured about four hundred more votes than his running mate, Richard Nixon, but Adlai Stevenson secured almost the same margin over his vice-presidential nominee, Senator John Sparkman.

In recent years it is most interesting to note that, while the Democrats from 1936 to 1948 have leveled off at around 149,000 votes in the state, the Republicans, who hit a low in 1936, have steadily increased the presidential vote totals, which would seem to indicate that they have been getting the new vote. Franklin Roosevelt received 116,502 votes in 1932 and 150,032 in 1936. His percentage shot up in these elections from 56.5 to 69.3. With the exception of the extraordinarily high percentage of Bryan in 1896, 82.7, Roosevelt's 1936 percentage is the all-time high for presidential candidates. Although President Eisenhower received the highest total of votes, 194,190, ever cast for a presidential candidate in the state, his 1952 percentage was 58.9. President Roosevelt topped this percentage in 1940 and 1944, but dropped in these years from his 1936 record to 62.3 and 60.4 per cent. While his percentages remained high in spite of significant declines from 1936, Roosevelt's total number of votes remained around 150,000 or within 4,000 votes for the three presidential elections from 1936 to 1944. The amazing victory of President Truman in 1948 was won with 149,151 votes or 53.9 per cent. His success obscured what was happening in Utah voting trends.

With die exception of 1948 when Dewey dropped slightly from his 1944 figure, the Republicans increased their total from 64,489 in 1936 to 194,190 in 1952. In 1948, however, the Republicans gained the governor's chair, and their congressional vote in this year was higher than Dewey's.

Many reasons have been cited for the Republicans securing the new vote. They themselves would claim, characteristically, that they had the superior candidates and the more acceptable issues to the voter who steps alone into the ballot booth for a moment's sober reflection in his temporary position as a king or queen in full sovereignty for a fleeting moment. But the analysis of what has happened may go deeper than this rationalization. It used to be said in Utah that a large turnout at the polls was an advantage to the Democratic party, which was supposed to be the harbor for the lower income, and therefore the more numerous, group of citizens. This theory certainly has been exploded by a study of the accompanying election figures.

Actually in Utah there has been not only a substantial increase in the population, but there has been a significantly large and rapid turnover. More of the population is mobile, if not actually transient, than the leaders would like to admit. This mobility has been due to the growing industrialization and the influx of federal installations during and since the war, with the attendant flow of those persons formerly dependent on agriculture to the rapidly growing urban centers between Provo and Ogden. In spite of the increasing industrialization, the basic characteristic of the population has remained middle class. State politics has been dominated by legislatures representing overwhelmingly the agrarian interests of the outlying counties and the business interests of the metropolitan areas, with historically known agricultural areas becoming urbanized between the squeeze of industrial and trade centers.

Steady employment has kept the worker busy and prosperous, TV and automobiles have kept him amused, prosperity has kept him bound to a middle class, albeit a lower middle class, outlook. In the meantime, the Republicans have employed the public relations man with his technical skill in the use of words and the mass media of communication, to scare the stay-at-home voter out of his easy chair in front of the TV to save the economy from the Communists. True, the Democrats have insisted on presenting candidates with long records in office, overlapping the New Deal days and the friendly days with Soviet Russia during World War II, making them susceptible to the Communist gimmick and the corruption game. Republicans will say that the Democrats have had access to the same services and the same techniques. The facts are that the Democrats have found it more and more difficult to find financial resources among local business men and wealthy groups; in fact, these sources are almost closed off to them. They simply do not have the local financial resources available to the Republicans to use the expensive TV shows, radio broadcasts, and large newspaper advertisements. Most large sums of money the Democrats receive come from outside the state, from labor organizations and minority groups, but these sources are not always sufficiently reliable to ensure adequate campaign planning.

Whatever the reasons, it would seem that since 1936 the Republicans have been securing the new vote; not only the independent vote, estimated by politicians at about 35 per cent in Utah, but also the new vote which comes from the natural increase in the population and the immigrant vote from elsewhere in the United States and from abroad; above all, they have managed to secure the traditional non-voter or stay-at-home voter.

PRESIDENTIAL VOTE IN UTAH, 1896-1952*

For full citations and the table of votes please view this article on a desktop.