1912 United States presidential election in New Jersey California, and the Republican nominees, incumbent President William Howard Taft of Ohio and his running mate incumbent Vice President James S. Sherman of New York. Wilson carried New Jersey with a bare plurality of 41.20% of the vote to Roosevelt's 33.60%, a victory margin of 7.60%. Taft came in third place with 20.53%. Coming in a distant fourth was Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs, who took 3.69%. Like much of the Northeast, New Jersey in this era was a staunchly Republican state, having not given a majority of the vote to a Democratic presidential candidate since 1892. In his initial
Robert Taft Jr. same middle initial. Robert Jr.'s paternal grandparents were President William Howard Taft and First Lady Helen Louise "Nellie" Herron while his maternal grandparents were Lloyd Wheaton Bowers (Solicitor General of the United States from 1909–1910) and Louisa Bennett Wilson. His older brother was William Howard Taft III, who served as Ambassador to Ireland from 1953 to 1957, while his younger brothers were Lloyd Bowers Taft, who worked as an investment banker in Cincinnati, and Horace Dwight Taft, who became a professor of physics and dean at Yale. Taft graduated from Yale University in 1939 and Harvard Law School in 1942.