U.S. Elections of 1920

Identification: The Event: U.S. presidential and congressional elections

Date: November 2, 1920

The 1920 elections saw the Republican Party regain control of the presidency and the U.S. Congress. The victory was seen as a repudiation of liberal interventionist policies advanced by the Democratic Party and a validation of smaller government at home and isolationist policies abroad.

The outcome of the 1920 presidential election was almost a foregone conclusion by 1918. The Republicans felt certain they would regain control of the presidency after eight years of Democratic control but did not at first know who the new president should be.

The Republicans and the Progressives

The Republicans’ confidence in 1920 may have seemed misplaced given the condition of the party just eight years earlier, when the presidential election of 1912 split the party in half. When President William H. Taft did not pursue Progressive policies, Theodore Roosevelt mounted a third-party candidacy against his former vice president and took enough Republican votes from Taft to ensure that Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic nominee, would win. The loss extended to Congress, where the Democrats gained control of both houses.

Progressive and mainstream Republicans remained divided in the presidential election of 1916, this time with possible U.S. entry into World War I as the main campaign issue. The Republicans nominated the moderate Charles Evans Hughes, a former New York governor and then member of the Supreme Court, but Wilson won reelection by a narrow margin on an ill-fated promise to stay out of the war. Despite losing the presidential election, the Republicans reached parity with Democrats in the House and began closing the gap in the Senate.

The Congressional Elections of 1918

Heading into the congressional elections of 1918, President Wilson abandoned his “politics is adjourned” stance, which he had used to win bipartisan support for his war policies. Instead, he publicly advocated for a Democratic-controlled Congress that he assumed would strengthen his position at the end of the war and blunt criticism of his Fourteen Points, a plan for peace that included the basis of what became the League of Nations. However, the Republicans spun this appeal into an assault on the patriotism of all Republicans and made Wilson look as if he wanted more power than he was due as president. That November, Republicans regained control of both houses of Congress, raising their hopes of retaking the White House as well.

The 1920 Republican Nomination

Most Republicans in 1920 were confident that they could gain the White House. The Democrats had faltered after losing control of Congress; the national economy had also stumbled, as the transition to a peacetime footing proved difficult and unemployment was high. The country seemed to have tired of Wilson’s internationalism, and, speaking through their representatives, Americans had rejected the Treaty of Versailles and ended any chance of American participation in the League of Nations. The League had been Wilson’s dream, and he campaigned tirelessly but to no avail for its adoption, ruining his health in the process. The Democrats had no one ready to assume leadership in his absence.

For the Republicans, the growing support for isolationism and weariness of foreign entanglements seemed the perfect opportunity to reclaim the presidency, and in 1920, nine men came forward as potential candidates. Hiram Johnson, Leonard Wood, and Frank Lowden were the main contenders in the primaries leading up to the Republican National Convention in June in Chicago. Lower on the list of likely nominees was Warren G. Harding, an affable, low-profile senator from Ohio, a middle-of-the-road Republican who had not offended anyone in the party. Over the course of ten ballots, and with some backroom political maneuvering, Harding emerged as the Republican presidential nominee, running in the general election against another Ohioan, Governor James Cox, the Democratic nominee.

Harding’s Front Porch Campaign

The presidential campaign of 1920 would offer voters a look to the past and a glimpse into the future of American politics. Harding spent most of his time campaigning from his front porch in Marion, Ohio, which he considered a more dignified way of seeking votes, and was consistent in his view that Americans craved a “return to normalcy” in the postwar era. Republican strategists arranged for trains carrying supporters to stop in Marion, where the crowds would march down the main street and halt in front of Harding’s porch. He would then read a prepared speech and invite them to have some refreshments and take some pictures. Republican leaders decided that a managed, structured campaign with a highly scripted candidate was the best way to send a consistent message to prospective voters. Harding campaigned against the League of Nations and for the votes of women. Through the available technology of the time—namely, movies, records, radio, and electronically transmitted photographs—Harding’s front porch speeches reached voters all across the country.

In November 1920, Harding and the Republicans won the election by a landslide. Outmaneuvered, outspent, and hindered by attachment to unpopular policies, Cox lost in thirty-seven of the forty-eight states, garnering only 34.5 percent of the total vote. The third-party candidates posed no significant challenge to either of the major parties in this election: Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs, who had led a presidential campaign while serving a prison sentence for sedition, took about 3.4 percent of the popular vote; Farmer-Labor Party candidate Parley Christensen won about 1 percent; and Prohibition Party candidate Aaron S. Watkins received a mere 0.7 percent. The Democrats also lost control of both houses of Congress. Only one seat in the House went to a third-party candidate, a Socialist.

Impact

The elections of 1920 ended eight years of Democratic control in Congress and the White House and ushered in a twelve-year period of Republican rule. Harding’s campaign changed the way government and citizens interacted with each other, while the election marked a shift in the way the United States looked at the rest of the world. It was also the first presidential election in which American women were allowed to cast ballots, and voters around the country were influenced by the new communications technologies available to the political parties.

Bibliography

Adams, Samuel Hopkins. Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding. New York: Octagon Books, 1979. A portrait of Warren G. Harding, the people around him, and their path to the White House.

Congressional Quarterly. Guide to U.S. Elections. 5th ed. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2005. Includes complete listings of congressional and gubernatorial races for every state.

Page, William Tyler, comp. Statistics of the Congressional and Presidential Election of November 2, 1920. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1921.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Crisis of the Old Order: The Age of Roosevelt, 1919–1933. Reprint. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

Walton, Hanes, Donald Richard Deskins, and Sherman Puckett. Presidential Elections, 1789–2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Details the campaign issues, major- and minor-party candidates, and context for the 1920 elections. Includes color maps and graphs.