Pennsylvania was the only eastern state won by Roosevelt; in the Midwest, he carried Michigan, Minnesota, and South Dakota; in the West, California, and Washington.[298] Wilson's victory was the first for a Democrat since Cleveland in 1892. It was the party's best performance in the Electoral College since 1852. Roosevelt, meanwhile, garnered a higher share of the popular vote than any other third-party presidential candidate in history and won the most states of any third-party candidate after the Civil War.[299]

South American expedition (1913–1914)
Main article: Roosevelt–Rondon Scientific Expedition
In 1907 a friend of Roosevelt's, John Augustine Zahm, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, invited Roosevelt to help plan a research expedition to South America. Now was the time to escape politics. To finance it, Roosevelt obtained support from the American Museum of Natural History in return for promising to bring back many new animal specimens. Roosevelt's popular book, Through the Brazilian Wilderness[300] describes his expedition into the Brazilian jungle in 1913 as a member of the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition, co-named after its leader, Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon.

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