1920 United States presidential election

thumb|200x200px|[[Woodrow Wilson, the incumbent president in 1920, whose second term expired on March 4, 1921]]

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1920. The Republican ticket of senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio and governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts defeated the Democratic ticket of governor James M. Cox of Ohio and assistant secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. It was the first election held after the end of the First World War, and the first election after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave nationwide suffrage to women.

thumb|270x270px|Women cast votes in Cincinnati in the first presidential election after the Nineteenth Amendment extended suffrage to women

Incumbent president Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who had served since 1913, privately hoped for a third term despite severe physical and mental disabilities from a stroke, but he had very little support. Former president Theodore Roosevelt had been the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, but he died in 1919 without leaving an obvious heir to his progressive legacy. The major parties turned to little-known dark horse candidates from the state of Ohio, a populous swing state with many electoral votes. Cox won on the 44th ballot at the 1920 Democratic National Convention, defeating William Gibbs McAdoo (Wilson's son-in-law), A. Mitchell Palmer, and several other candidates. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party, and he clinched his nomination on the tenth ballot at the 1920 Republican National Convention.

The election was dominated by the American social and political environment in the aftermath of World War I, which was marked by a hostile response to certain aspects of Wilson's foreign policy and a massive reaction against the reformist zeal of the Progressive Era. The wartime economic boom had collapsed and the country was deep in a recession. Wilson's advocacy for America's entry into the League of Nations, in the face of a return to non-interventionist opinion, challenged his effectiveness as president, and there were wars and revolutions overseas. At home, the year 1919 was marked by major strikes in the meatpacking and steel industries and large-scale race riots in Chicago and other cities. Additionally, the September 16, 1920, Wall Street bombing aroused fears of radicals and terrorists. The Irish Catholic and German communities were outraged at Wilson's perceived support of their traditional enemy, Great Britain.

Harding all but ignored Cox in the race, and essentially campaigned against Wilson by calling for a "return to normalcy". Harding won a landslide victory, sweeping every state outside of the South and becoming the first Republican since the end of Reconstruction to win a former state of the Confederacy: Tennessee. Harding's victory margin of 26.2 percent in the popular vote remains the largest popular-vote percentage margin ever since widespread popular elections began in the 1820s. (However, subsequent winning candidates in 1936, 1964 and 1972 exceeded his share of the popular vote.) Cox won just 34.1 percent of the popular vote, and Socialist Eugene V. Debs won 3.4 percent, despite being in prison at the time. It was the first election in which women had the right to vote in all 48 states, which caused the total popular vote to increase dramatically, from 18.5 million in 1916 to 26.8 million in 1920.

It was the third presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state (the others have been in 1860, 1904, 1940, 1944, and 2016). Coincidentally, the election was held on Harding's 55th birthday. Both major-party vice-presidential nominees would later succeed to the presidency: Calvin Coolidge (Republican) upon Harding's death in 1923 and Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democratic) after defeating Republican president Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#E81B23; width:200px;"| Warren G. Harding|

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#E81B23; width:200px;"| Calvin Coolidge|

|- style="color:#000; font-size:100%; background:#FFD0D7;"

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for Vice President

| center|200x200px

| United States Senator from Ohio (1915–1921)

| 48th Governor of Massachusetts (1919–1921)

|colspan=2|: 39 votes : 692.2 votes 144,762 votes

Other candidates

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%"

|- †

| colspan="7" style="text-align:center; width:1200px; font-size:120%; color:white; background:;"|Candidates in this section are sorted by their highest vote count on the nominating ballots

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Leonard Wood

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Frank Orren Lowden

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Hiram Johnson

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|William Cameron Sproul

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Nicholas Murray Butler

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Calvin Coolidge

|center|120x120px

|- style="text-align:center"

|Chief of Staff of the Army from New Hampshire (1910–1914)

|Governor of Illinois (1917–1921)

|U.S. Senator from California (1917–1945)

|Governor of Pennsylvania (1919–1923)

|Columbia University President from New York (1902–1945)

|Governor of Massachusetts (1919–1921)

|- style="text-align:center"

|: 145 votes : 699.5 votes 86,194 votes

Other candidates

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%"

|- †

| colspan="7" style="text-align:center; width:1200px; font-size:120%; color:white; background:;"|Candidates in this section are sorted by their highest vote count on the nominating ballots

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|William Gibbs McAdoo

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Mitchell Palmer

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Al Smith

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|John W. Davis

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Edward Edwards

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Robert Latham Owen

|center|120x120px

|- style="text-align:center"

|U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from California (1913–1918)

|U.S. Attorney General from Pennsylvania (1919–1921)

|Governor of New York (1919–1920)

|Ambassador to Britain from West Virginia (1918–1921)

|Governor of New Jersey (1920–1923)

|U.S. Senator from Oklahoma (1907–1925)

|- style="text-align:center"

|: 0 votes The 1920 election was Debs's fifth and last attempt to become president. The Communist Party USA attempted to give its presidential nomination to Debs, but he declined the nomination.

During the campaign the Socialists had four airplanes drop socialist literature over Toledo, Ohio. The wife of Charles Edward Russell claimed that the ghost of Susan B. Anthony told her to vote for Debs. Over 60,000 people donated to the Socialist Party's campaign fund. Gerber predicted that Debs would receive three million votes and that five Socialists would be elected to Congress. Debs received 913,693 votes with his largest amount of support coming from New York. His vote total was over 50 percent more than what Allan L. Benson had received in the 1916 election. Debs later chose to not run for president in the 1924 election and instead supported Robert M. La Follette.

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

| colspan="2" | Presidential Ballot

! Eugene V. Debs !!132

Farmer-Labor Party

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#66FF99;" colspan="30"|<big>1920 Farmer-Labor Party ticket</big>

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#009900; width:200px;"| Parley P. Christensen|

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#009900; width:200px;"| Max S. Hayes|

|- style="color:#000; font-size:100%; background:#66FF99;"

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for Vice President

| center|200x200px

| State Representative from Utah (1915–1917)

| Editor of the Cleveland Citizen from Ohio

Other candidates

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%"

|- †

| colspan="7" style="text-align:center; width:800px; font-size:120%; color:white; background:;"|Candidates in this section are sorted by their highest vote count on the nominating ballots

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Dudley Field Malone

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Eugene V. Debs

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Henry Ford

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Lynn Frazier

|center|120x120px

|- style="text-align:center"

|Collector of the Port of New York from New York (1913–1913)

|State Representative from Indiana (1885–1887)

|President of the Ford Motor Company from Michigan (1906–1919)

|Governor of North Dakota (1917–1921)

|- style="text-align:center"

|: 174.6 votes

|: 68 votes

|: 12.3 votes

| : 9 votes

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Herbert S. Bigelow

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Louis F. Post

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Jane Addams

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Robert M. La Follette

|center|120x120px

|- style="text-align:center"

|Clergyman from Ohio

|Asst U. S. Secretary of Labor from New York (1913–1921)

|Co-founder of Hull House from Illinois

|U.S. Senator from Wisconsin (1906–1925)

|- style="text-align:center"

|: 7 votes

|: 1.7 votes

|: 0 votes

Prohibition Party

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#f1f1f1;" colspan="30"|71x71px

<big>1920 Prohibition Party ticket</big>

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#FF00FF; width:200px;"| [[Aaron S. Watkins|

]]

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#FF00FF; width:200px;"| [[D. Leigh Colvin|

]]

|- style="color:#000; font-size:100%; background:#ffa3ff;"

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for Vice President

| center|200x200px

| Professor and Methodist Minister from Ohio

| American politician from New York

| colspan=2 |Campaign

Other candidates

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%"

|- †

| colspan="7" style="text-align:center; width:800px; font-size:120%; color:white; background:;"|Candidates in this section are sorted by their highest vote count on the nominating ballots

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Robert H. Patton

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Daniel A. Poling

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|Charles Hiram Randall

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;"|William Jennings Bryan

|center|120x120px

|- style="text-align:center"

|Prohibition Party Convention Chair (1916)

|Itinerant Minister from Pennsylvania

|Congressman from California (1915–1921)

|U.S. Secretary of State from Nebraska (1913–1915)

|- style="text-align:center"

|: 85 votes

|: 28 votes

|: 9 votes

Meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, there was some question whether the Prohibition Party would field an independent ticket as opposed to endorsing either Harding or Cox, but this was predicated on either making a clear statement that they would not move to weaken the Eighteenth Amendment; neither chose to make any such commitment. The ticket favored by most present was that of William Jennings Bryan for president and William "Billy" Sunday for vice president, and indeed when a motion was made to nominate Bryan by acclamation, of the more than two hundred present it was only opposed by six. Upon hearing of his nomination, however, Bryan declined the gesture, not wishing to remain singularly focused on the prohibition question or to sever his ties with the Democratic Party entirely. Some had considered Billy Sunday a possible substitute but Sunday was "satisfied" with Republican nominee Warren Harding, while others thought about potentially nominating Henry Ford as their standard-bearer. With the nomination thrown wide open, the party ultimately opted to nominate keynote speaker and Methodist minister Aaron Watkins of Ohio, over other candidates such as 1916 Convention Chair Robert Patton of Illinois, itinerant minister Daniel Poling of Pennsylvania, and Congressman Charles Randall of California. Historian David Leigh Colvin of New York was nominated for the vice presidency.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:right;"

! colspan="3" | Presidential Balloting

! colspan="2" | Vice-Presidential Balloting

! Ballot!!1 !! 2 || Ballot !! 1

| align=left| Aaron S. Watkins|| 85.0 || 108.0 || D. Leigh Colvin || 108.0

| align=left| Robert H. Patton|| 85.0 || 74.0 || Herman P. Faris || 47.0

|align=left| Daniel A. Poling|| 28.0 || 24.0 || Frank S. Regan || 15.0

| align=left| Charles H. Randall|| 9.0 || 2.0 || James H. Woertendyke || 12.0

American Party

James E. Ferguson, a former governor of Texas, announced his candidacy on April 21, 1920, in Temple, Texas, under the badge of "American Party". Ferguson was opposed to Democrats whom he saw as too controlled by elite academic interests as seen when Woodrow Wilson endorsed rival Thomas H. Ball in the gubernatorial primary, and hoped to help the Republicans carry Texas for the first time (Texas never went Republican during Reconstruction). Initially Ferguson and running mate William J. Hough hoped to carry their campaign to other states, but Ferguson was unable to get on the ballot anywhere outside of Texas. Ferguson did manage to gain almost 10 percent of the vote in Texas, and won eleven counties in the southeast of the state.

General election

Return to normalcy

Warren Harding spoke of "return to normalcy", playing upon the weariness of the American public after the social upheaval of the Progressive Era, World War I, and the Spanish flu. Additionally, the international responsibilities engendered by the Allied victory in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles proved deeply unpopular, causing a reaction against Wilson, who had pushed especially hard for the latter.

Ethnic issues

left|thumb|Poster for the 1920 Democratic presidential ticket

Irish Americans were powerful in the Democratic party, and groups such as Clan na Gael opposed going to war alongside their enemy Britain, especially after the violent suppression of the Easter Rising of 1916. Wilson won them over in 1917 by promising to ask Britain to give Ireland its independence. Wilson had won the presidential election of 1916 with strong support from German Americans and Irish Americans, largely because of his slogan "He kept us out of war" and the longstanding American policy of isolationism. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, however, he reneged on his commitments to the Irish-American community, who vehemently denounced him. His dilemma was that Britain was his war ally. Events such as the anti-British Black Tom and Kingsland explosions in 1916 on American soil (in part the result of wartime Irish and German co-ordination) and the Irish anti-conscription crisis of 1918 were all embarrassing to recall in 1920.

Britain had already passed an Irish Home Rule Act in 1914, suspended for the war's duration. However the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin had led to increased support for the more radical Sinn Féin who in 1919 formed the First Dáil, effectively declaring Ireland independent, sparking the Irish War of Independence. Britain would pass the Government of Ireland Act in late 1920, by which Ireland would have two home-ruled states within the British empire. This satisfied Wilson. The provisions of these were inadequate to the supporters of the Irish Republic, however, which claimed full sovereignty. This position was also supported by many Irish Americans. The American Committee for Relief in Ireland was set up in 1920 to assist victims of the Irish War of Independence of 1919–21. Some Irish-American senators joined the "irreconcilables" who blocked the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and United States membership in the League of Nations.

Wilson blamed the Irish Americans and German Americans for the lack of popular support for his unsuccessful campaign to have the United States join the League of Nations, saying, "There is an organized propaganda against the League of Nations and against the treaty proceeding from exactly the same sources that the organized propaganda proceeded from which threatened this country here and there with disloyalty, and I want to say—I cannot say too often—any man who carries a hyphen about with him [i.e., a hyphenated American] carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."

Of the $5,500,000 raised by supporters of the Irish Republic in the United States in 1919–20, the Dublin parliament (Dáil Éireann) voted in June 1920 to spend $500,000 on the American presidential election. How this money was spent remains unclear. Ironically, the lawyer who had advised the fundraisers was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the losing vice-presidential candidate. In any case, the Irish American city machines sat on their hands during the election, allowing the Republicans to roll up unprecedented landslides in every major city. Many German-American Democrats voted Republican or stayed home, giving the GOP landslides in the rural Midwest.

Campaign

thumb|left|[[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt and Cox at a campaign appearance in Washington, D.C.]]

Wilson had hoped for a "solemn referendum" on the League of Nations, but did not get one. Harding waffled on the League, thereby keeping Idaho senator William Borah and other Republican "irreconcilables" in line. Cox also hedged. He went to the White House to seek Wilson's blessing and apparently endorsed the League, but—upon discovering its unpopularity among Democrats—revised his position to one that would accept the League only with reservations, particularly on Article Ten, which would require the United States to participate in any war declared by the League (thus taking the same standpoint as Republican Senate leader Henry Cabot Lodge). As reporter Brand Whitlock observed, the League was a much more important issue in government circles than to the electorate. He also noted that the campaign was not waged on issues: "The people, indeed, do not know what ideas Harding or Cox represents; neither do Harding or Cox. Great is democracy." False rumors circulated that Senator Harding had "Negro blood," but this did not greatly hurt Harding's election campaign.

Governor Cox made a whirlwind campaign that took him to rallies, train station speeches, and formal addresses, reaching audiences totaling perhaps two million, whereas Senator Harding relied upon a "Front Porch Campaign" like that of William McKinley in 1896. It brought thousands of voters to Marion, Ohio, where Harding spoke from his home. GOP campaign manager Will Hays spent some $8.1 million, nearly four times the money Cox's campaign spent. Hays used national advertising in a major way (with advice from adman Albert Lasker). The theme was Harding's own slogan "America First". Thus the Republican advertisement in Collier's for October 30, 1920, demanded, "Let's be done with wiggle and wobble." The image presented in the ads was nationalistic, using catch phrases like "absolute control of the United States by the United States," "Independence means independence, now as in 1776," "This country will remain American. Its next President will remain in our own country," and "We decided long ago that we objected to foreign government of our people."

Harding's landslide came from all directions except the South. Irish- and German-American voters who had backed Wilson and peace in 1916 now voted against Wilson and Versailles. "A vote for Harding", said the German-language press, "is a vote against the persecutions suffered by German-Americans during the war". No major German-language newspaper supported Governor Cox. Many Irish Americans, bitterly angry at Wilson's refusal to help Ireland at Versailles, simply abstained from voting in the presidential election. This allowed the Republicans to mobilize the ethnic vote, and Harding swept the big cities.

thumb|[[Clifford Berryman's cartoon depiction of Eugene V. Debs' campaign from prison.]]

This was the first election in which women from every state were allowed to vote, following the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in August 1920 (just in time for the general election).

Tennessee's vote for Warren G. Harding marked the first time since the end of Reconstruction that even one of the eleven states of the former Confederacy had voted for a Republican presidential candidate. The last Republican to claim Tennessee had been Ulysses S. Grant in 1868.

Despite the magnitude of Cox's defeat, his running mate Franklin D. Roosevelt became a well-known political figure because of his active and energetic campaign (despite suffering an illness in August 1921 that left him paralyzed from the waist down). In 1928, he was elected Governor of New York, and in 1932 he was elected president. He remained in power until his death in 1945 as the longest-serving American president in history.

Results

right|thumb|400px|Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage for the winning candidate. Shades of red are for Harding (Republican), shades of blue are for Cox (Democratic), shades of green are for Ferguson (American),

The total vote for 1920 was roughly 26,750,000, an increase of eight million from 1916. Harding won in all twelve cities with populations above 500,000. Harding won a net vote total of 1,540,000 from the twelve largest cities, the most for any Republican and fifth highest for any candidate from 1920 to 1948. The Democratic vote was almost exactly the vote from 1916, but the Republican vote nearly doubled, as did the "other" vote. As noted earlier, the great increase in the total number of votes is mainly attributable to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. However, Georgia and Mississippi refused to let any women vote in this election, claiming that the amendment's August ratification had given women insufficient time to complete their voter registration.

thumb|"Both Parties Claim Victory on Election Eve" The Atlanta Journal, November 1, 1920

The Republican ticket carried nearly two-thirds of the counties (1,949). Democrats carried only 1,101 counties, fewer than Alton Parker had carried in 1904 and consequently the fewest during the Fourth Party System until that point (Al Smith would carry even fewer in 1928). Harding carried every county in the Pacific section, where Wilson had carried 76 in 1916. In the Mountain section Cox carried only thirteen counties, seven of them in New Mexico bordering Texas, whereas Wilson carried all but twenty-one Mountain Section counties in 1916. At least one county was lost in every section in the Union and in every state except South Carolina and Mississippi. Eleven counties in Texas recorded a plurality for Ferguson. With the tipping point state of Rhode Island being decided by a 31.2 percent margin, the 1920 election has the largest margin of victory in the tipping point state in American history. This is one of three elections since the Civil War (along with those of 1924 and 1996) in which national voter turnout was below 50 percent.

This was also the third presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1860, 1904, 1940, 1944, and 2016. The eleven states of the former Confederacy provided 5.83% of Harding's votes, with him taking 35.09% of the vote in that region.

File:United States Electoral College 1920.svg

Source (Popular Vote):

Source (Electoral Vote):

For the 1916 election, only a single radio station, 2XG, an experimental station operated by the De Forest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company in New York City, made an audio broadcast of the election returns. For 1920, this increased to at least four stations, including the Detroit News "Detroit News Radiophone" station, 8MK (later WWJ); a temporary arrangement made by the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch in conjunction with William E. Woods of the Benwoods Company, and the Buffalo Evening News, over an amateur station operated by Charles C. Klinck, Jr. However, the most prominent station was the debut of Westinghouse's ambitious commercial broadcast service, as announcers at 8ZZ (later KDKA) in East Pittsburgh read telegraph ticker results as they came in. Later station publicity proclaimed that this broadcast "was a national sensation, acclaimed by newspapers all over the country". However a comprehensive review of contemporary newspapers determined that reports, although positive, actually appeared only in a few local papers, thus it "was not an immediate 'sensation' and that the fame of this event developed over time with later celebratory accounts".

Geography of results

650px|thumb|left

File:1920 United States presidential election results map by county.svg|Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

</gallery>

Cartographic gallery

File:PresidentialCounty1920Colorbrewer.gif|Map of presidential election results by county

File:RepublicanPresidentialCounty1920Colorbrewer.gif|Map of Republican presidential election results by county

File:DemocraticPresidentialCounty1920Colorbrewer.gif|Map of Democratic presidential election results by county

File:OtherPresidentialCounty1920Colorbrewer.gif|Map of "other" presidential election results by county

File:CartogramPresidentialCounty1920Colorbrewer.gif|Cartogram of presidential election results by county

File:CartogramRepublicanPresidentialCounty1920Colorbrewer.gif|Cartogram of Republican presidential election results by county

File:CartogramDemocraticPresidentialCounty1920Colorbrewer.gif|Cartogram of Democratic presidential election results by county

File:CartogramOtherPresidentialCounty1920Colorbrewer.gif|Cartogram of "other" presidential election results by county

File:Debs1920PercentageByState.svg|State Level Performance for Eugene Debs' Presidential Campaign, 1920 (Socialist Party)

</gallery>

Results by state

Source:

{|class="wikitable"

|States/districts won by Cox/Roosevelt

|States/districts won by Harding/Coolidge

|}<div style="overflow:auto">

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:right"

! colspan=2 |

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| Warren G. Harding Republican

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| James Cox Democratic

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| Eugene Debs Socialist

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| Parley Christensen Farmer-Labor

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| Aaron Watkins Prohibition

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| James Ferguson American

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| William Cox Socialist Labor

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| Margin

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="1"| Margin Swing

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| State Total

! align=center | State

! style="text-align:center; font-size: 60%" data-sort-type="number" | electoral votes