1916 United States presidential election (President Hughes)

The 1916 United States presidential election was the 33rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson was narrowly defeated by former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate.

In June, the 1916 Republican National Convention chose Hughes as a compromise between the conservative and progressive wings of the party. Hughes, who had served as Governor of New York prior to the Supreme Court, defeated John W. Weeks, Elihu Root, and several other candidates on the third ballot of the convention. While conservative and progressive Republicans had been divided in the 1912 election between the candidacies of incumbent President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt, they largely united around Hughes in his bid to oust Wilson. As of 2022 Hughes remains the only current or former Supreme Court justice to serve as a major party's presidential nominee. Wilson was re-nominated at the 1916 Democratic National Convention a few days later, without opposition. While Wilson's Vice President Thomas R. Marshall was re-nominated, Hughes's running mate was Charles W. Fairbanks, who had been Theodore Roosevelt's vice president in his second term.

The campaign took place against a background dominated by war — the Mexican Revolution and World War I. Although officially neutral in the European conflict, public opinion in the United States favored the Allied forces led by Great Britain and France against the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, due to the harsh treatment of civilians by the German Army and the militaristic character of the German and Austrian monarchies. Despite their sympathy for the Allied forces, most American voters wanted to avoid involvement in the war and preferred to continue a policy of neutrality. Wilson's campaign used the popular slogans "He kept us out of war." and "America First" to appeal to those voters who wanted to avoid a war in Europe or with Mexico.

After a hard-fought contest, Wilson defeated Hughes by nearly 100,000 votes out of about 18.5 million cast in the popular vote. Hughes secured a narrow majority in the Electoral College by sweeping the Midwest and winning several swing states with razor-thin margins. Hughes won California, the decisive state, by just 5,783 votes. Since the GOP was not as split as in 1912, Wilson did not have the same easy victory as he had four years earlier, losing his home state of New Jersey along with the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, West Virginia, California (although he still won an electoral vote from both states), and Wisconsin. However, Wilson still managed to win the state of Utah, which he lost in the 1912 election, however, he failed to win California, losing the state by around 40,000 votes.

Soon after Wilson's loss, he enacted his contingency plan, which removed Robert Lansing from his position as Secretary of State and nominated Hughes. Woodrow Wilson and his Vice President, Thomas Marshall, resigned. This made Hughes president before he was supposed to be in March of 1917.

The United States entered the war in April 1917, four months after Hughes's term began.