United States presidential election, 1920

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Presidential electoral votes by state.
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Presidential electoral votes by state.

The United States presidential election of 1920 was dominated by the aftermath of World War I. The wartime boom had collapsed. Diplomats and politicians were arguing over peace treaties and the question of America's entry into the League of Nations. Overseas there were wars and revolutions; at home 1919 was marked by major strikes in meatpacking and steel, and large race riots in Chicago and other cities. Terrorist attacks on Wall Street produced fears of radicals and terrorists.

Outgoing President Woodrow Wilson was deeply unpopular: the economy was in a recession, Wilson's prosecution of the war had angered several traditionally Democratic constituencies, and his sponsorship of the League of Nations ran counter to American isolationism which had been strengthened by World War I's butcher bill. Moreover, Wilson's administration had been adrift as Wilson had been disabled by a stroke.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt had hoped to contend for the 1920 Republican nomination but his death in 1919 cut short his campaign, leaving the Republican field wide open for a dark horse candidate.

Both major parties turned to dark horse candidates from the elector-rich state of Ohio. The Democrats nominated newspaper publisher and Governor James M. Cox to take on Senator Warren G. Harding. Calling for "normalcy", Harding essentially campaigned against Wilson, and, with an almost 4-to-1 spending advantage, beat Cox in a landslide.

Contents

[edit] Nominations

[edit] Republican Party nomination

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On June 8, the Republican National Convention meet in Chicago The race was wide open, and soon the convention deadlocked between General Leonard Wood and Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois.

Others placed in nomination included Senators Warren G. Harding of Ohio, Hiram Johnson of California, and Miles Poindexter of Washington, Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts,Herbert Hoover, and Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler. Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr. of Wisconsin was not formally placed in nomination but received the votes of his state delegation, nonetheless. Harding was nominated for President on the tenth ballot, after shifts. The ten ballots went like this:

Presidential Balloting, RNC 1920
Ballot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Before shifts 10 After shifts
Warren G. Harding 65.5 59 58.5 61.5 78 89 105 133 374.5 644.7 692.2
Leonard Wood 287.5 289.5 303 314.5 299 311.5 312 299 249 181.5 156
Frank Lowden 211.5 259.5 282.5 289 303 311.5 311.5 307 121.5 28 11
Hiram Johnson 133.5 146 148 140.5 133.5 110 99.5 87 82 80.8 80.8
William C. Sproul 84 78.5 79.5 79.5 82.5 77 76 76 78 0 0
Nicholas Murray Butler 69.5 41 25 20 4 4 2 2 2 2 2
Calvin Coolidge 34 32 27 25 29 28 28 30 28 5 5
Robert M. La Follette 24 24 24 22 24 24 24 24 24 24 24
Jeter C. Pritchard 21 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Miles Poindexter 20 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 14 2 0
Howard Sutherland 17 15 9 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Herbert C. Hoover 5.5 5.5 5.5 5 6 5 4 5 6 10.5 9.5
Scattering 11 9 7 9 9 9 6 6 5 5.5 3.5

Harding's nomination, said to have been secured in negotiations among party bosses in a “smoke-filled room”, was engineered by Harry M. Daugherty, Harding's political manager who, upon Harding's election, became Attorney General. Prior to the convention, Daugherty was quoted as saying, “I don't expect Senator Harding to be nominated on the first, second, or third ballots, but I think we can afford to take chances that about eleven minutes after two, Friday morning of the convention, when fifteen or twenty weary men are sitting around a table, someone will say: ‘Who will we nominate?’ At that decisive time, the friends of Harding will suggest him and we can well afford to abide by the result.” Daugherty's prediction described essentially what occurred, but historians Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris argue that Daugherty's prediction has been given too much weight in narratives of the convention.

Once the presidential nomination was finally settled, the party bosses and Sen. Harding recommended Wisconsin Sen. Irvine Lenroot to the delegates for the second spot, but the delegates, revolted and nominated Coolidge, who was very popular over his handling of the Boston Police strike of the year before. The Tally:

Vice Presidential Balloting, RNC 1920
Calvin Coolidge 674.5
Irvine L. Lenroot 146.5
Henry J. Allen 68.5
Henry Anderson 28
Asle J. Gronna 24
Hiram Johnson 22.5
Jeter C. Pritchard 11
Abstaining 9

Source for convention coverage: Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris, Convention Decisions and Voting Records (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1973), pp. 200-208.

[edit] Democratic Party nomination

Although William Gibbs McAdoo (Wilson's son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary) was the strongest candidate, Wilson blocked his nomination in hopes a deadlocked convention would demand Wilson run for a third term. (Wilson at the time was physically immobile and in seclusion.) The Democrats, meeting in San Francisco, nominated another newspaper editor from Ohio, Governor James M. Cox, as their presidential candidate, and 38 year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, a fifth cousin of the late president Teddy Roosevelt, for vice president. Early favorites for the nomination had included McAdoo and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Others placed in nomination included New York Governor Al Smith, New Jersey Governor Edward I. Edwards, and former Solicitor General John W. Davis.

[edit] Other nominations

Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs received 913,664 popular votes (3.4%), despite the fact that he was in prison at the time for advocating non-compliance with the draft in the war. Debs was later pardoned by President Harding. This was the most popular votes ever received by a Socialist Party candidate, though not the largest vote by percentage.

Parley P. Christensen of the Farmer-Labor Party took 265,411 votes (1.0%), while Prohibition Party candidate Aaron S. Watkins came in fifth with 189,339 votes (0.7%), the poorest showing for the Prohibition party since 1884; as the Eighteenth Amendment starting Prohibition had passed the previous year, this single-issue party seemed less relevant.

[edit] General election

[edit] Ethnic issues

Irish Americans were powerful in the Democratic party and opposed going to war alongside their enemy Britain, especially after the violent suppression of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. Wilson won them over in 1917 by promising to ask Britain to give Ireland its independence. At Versailles, however, he reneged and Irish American community vehemently denounced him. Wilson in turn blamed the Irish Americans and German Americans for the lack of popular support for 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 carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready."[1]

In response, 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.

[edit] Campaign

Wilson had hoped for a “solemn referendum” on the League of Nations, but did not get one. Harding waffled on the League, thereby keeping the “irreconcilables” like Senator William Borah in line. Cox also hedged. He went to the White House for Wilson's blessing and apparently endorsed the League, but—discovering its unpopularity among Democrats—he said that he wanted the League only with reservations, particularly on Article Ten, which would require the United States to participate in any war declared by the League. (That is, he took the same position as Republican Senate leader Henry Cabot Lodge.) As reporter Brand Whitlock observed, the League was an issue important in government circles, but was unimportant to the electorate. He also noted that the campaign was not being waged on issues: “The people, indeed, do not know what ideas Harding or Cox represents; neither do Harding or Cox. Great is democracy.”[2] Ugly (false) rumors circulated that Harding had "Negro blood," but this did not greatly hurt Harding's election campaign.

Cox made a whirlwind campaign that took him to rallies, train station speeches, and formal addresses, reaching audiences totaling perhaps 2 million. Harding relied upon a “Front Porch Campaign” similar to 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 about $8,100,000, nearly four times the money Cox 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 Magazine 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.”[3]

On election night, November 2, 1920, commercial radio broadcast coverage of election returns for the first time. Announcers at KDKA AM in Pittsburgh read telegraph ticker results over the air as they came in. This single station could be heard over most of the Eastern United States by the small percentage of the population that had radio receivers.

Harding's landslide came from all directions except the deep South.

Irish American 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.” Not one major German-language newspaper supported Cox.[4] The Irish Americans, bitterly angry at Wilson's refusal to help Ireland at Versailles, sat out the election. Since they controlled the Democratic party in most large cities, this allowed the Republicans to mobilize the ethnic vote, and Harding swept the big cities.

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.

Tennessee's vote for Warren G. Harding marked the first time since the end of Reconstruction that one of the 11 states of the Confederacy had voted for a Republican.

Despite Cox was defeated badly, his running-mate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, became a well-know political figure because of his active and energy campaing. In 1928 he became Governor of New York, and in 1932 he was elected President and remained in power until his death in 1945, as the longest-serving President ever.

[edit] Results

Presidential Candidate Party Home State Popular Vote Electoral Vote Running Mate Running Mate's
Home State		 Running Mate's
Electoral Vote
Count Percentage
Warren Gamaliel Harding Republican Ohio 16,144,093 60.3% 404 Calvin Coolidge Massachusetts 404
James Middleton Cox Democratic Ohio 9,139,661 34.1% 127 Franklin D. Roosevelt New York 127
Eugene Victor Debs Socialist Indiana 913,693 3.4% 0 Seymour Stedman Illinois 0
Parley P. Christensen Farmer-Labor Illinois 265,411 1.0% 0 Maximillian Sebastian Hayes Ohio 0
Aaron Sherman Watkins Prohibition Indiana 188,787 0.7% 0 David Leigh Colvin New York 0
James Edward Ferguson American Texas 47,968 0.2% 0 William J. Hough New York 0
William Wesley Cox Socialist Labor Missouri 31,716 0.1% 0 August Gilhaus New York 0
Other 34,496 0.1% 0 Other 0
Total 26,765,180 100.0% 531 Total 531
Needed to win 266 Needed to win 266

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1920 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 28, 2005).

Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ American Rhetoric, "Final Address in Support of the League of Nations", Woodrow Wilson, delivered 25 Sept 1919 in Pueblo, CO.
  2. ^ Sinclair, p. 168
  3. ^ Sinclair, p. 162
  4. ^ Sinclair, p. 163

[edit] References

  • Bagby, Wesley M. (1968). The Road to Normalcy: The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1920.
  • Boller, Paul F., Jr. (2004). Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 212–217. ISBN 0-19-516716-3.
  • John Milton Cooper. Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (2001)
  • John B. Duff, "German-Americans and the Peace, 1918-1920" American Jewish Historical Quarterly 1970 59(4): 424-459.
  • John B. Duff, "The Versailles Treaty and the Irish-Americans" Journal of American History 1968 55(3): 582-598. ISSN 0021-8723
  • Donald R. McCoy, "The Election of 1920," in History of American Presidential Elections, ed Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Fred L. Israel, (1971),
  • John A Morello. Selling the President, 1920: Albert D. Lasker, Advertising, and the Election of Warren G. Harding (2001)
  • Sinclair, Andrew (1965). The Available Man: The Life behind the Masks of Warren Gamaliel Harding.
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