United States presidential election, 1924
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| Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Coolidge/Dawes, Blue denotes those won by Davis/Bryan, Green denotes those won by La Follette/Wheeler. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. The old Confederate States had voted for Davis (plus Oklahoma), while all of the Union (except wisconsin) voted Coolidge. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The United States presidential election of 1924 was won by incumbent President Calvin Coolidge, the Republican candidate.
Coolidge was vice-president under Warren G. Harding and became president in 1923 when Harding died in office. Coolidge was given credit for a booming economy at home and no visible crises abroad. His candidacy was aided by a split within the Democratic Party. The regular Democratic candidate was John W. Davis, a little-known former congressman and diplomat from West Virginia. Since Davis was a conservative, many liberal Democrats bolted the party and backed the third-party campaign of Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin, who ran as the candidate of the Progressive Party. This was the first presidential election in which all American Indians were recognized as citizens and allowed to vote. Coolidge's 25.2-point victory margin in the popular vote is one of the largest ever.
Garland S. Tucker, in a 2010 book, argues that the election marked the "high tide of American conservatism," as both major candidates campaigned for limited government, reduced taxes, and less regulation.[1] The third place candidate, Robert La Follette, however, campaigned on a contrary platform.
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[edit] Nominations
[edit] Republican Party nomination
Republican Candidates
-
Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin
The Republican Convention was held in Cleveland, Ohio from June 10 to June 12, with the easy choice of nominating incumbent President Coolidge for a full term of his own. Former Illinois Governor Frank Orren Lowden was nominated as Coolidge's running mate, but he declined the honor, a unique event in 20th century political history. Charles G. Dawes, a prominent Republican businessman, was nominated for vice-president instead.
| Presidential ballot | 1 | Vice-presidential ballot | 1 | 2 Before shifts | 2 After shifts | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calvin Coolidge | 1065 | Charles G. Dawes | 149 | 111 | 49 | 682.5 |
| Robert M. La Follette | 34 | Frank Orren Lowden | 222 | 413 | 766 | 0 |
| Hiram Johnson | 10 | Theodore E. Burton | 139 | 288 | 94 | 0 |
| Herbert Hoover | 0 | 0 | 0 | 234.5 | ||
| William S. Kenyon | 172 | 95 | 68 | 75 | ||
| George Scott Graham | 81 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| James Eli Watson | 79 | 55 | 7 | 45 | ||
| Charles Curtis | 56 | 31 | 24 | 0 | ||
| Arthur M. Hyde | 55 | 36 | 36 | 0 | ||
| George W. Norris | 35 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Smith W. Brookhart | 0 | 31 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Frank T. Hines | 28 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Charles A. March | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| J. Will Taylor | 21 | 20 | 27 | 27 | ||
| William Purnell Jackson | 23 | 0 | 0 | 10 | ||
| Charles B. Warren | 10 | 1 | 23 | 14 | ||
| T. Coleman du Pont | 0 | 0 | 3 | 11 | ||
| Joseph M. Dixon | 6 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ||
| Everett Sanders | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | ||
| James Harbord | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | ||
| Albert J. Beveridge | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | ||
| John L. Coulter | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ||
| William Wrigley | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ||
| John J. Pershing | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
[edit] Democratic Party nomination
Democratic candidates:
- John W. Davis, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom from West Virginia
- William Gibbs McAdoo, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from California
- Al Smith, governor of New York
- Oscar Underwood, U.S. senator from Alabama
The 1924 Democratic National Convention was held in New York City from June 24 to July 9. The two leading candidates were William Gibbs McAdoo of California, former Secretary of the Treasury and son-in-law of former President Woodrow Wilson; and Governor Al Smith of New York. The balloting revealed a clear geographic and cultural split in the party, as McAdoo was supported mostly by rural, Protestant delegates from the South, West, and small-town Midwest who were supporters of Prohibition (called "drys"). In some cases McAdoo's delegates were also supporters of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which was at its peak of nationwide popularity in the 1920s, with chapters in all 48 states and 4 to 5 million members. Governor Smith was supported by the anti-Prohibition forces (called "wets"), many Roman Catholics and other ethnic minorities, big-city delegates in the Northeast and urban Midwest, and by liberal delegates opposed to the influence of the Ku Klux Klan.
An example of the deep split within the party came in a brutal floor fight over a proposal to publicly condemn the Klan; most of McAdoo's delegates in the South and West opposed the motion, while most of Smith's big-city delegates supported it. In the end the motion failed to carry by a single vote. William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate, argued against condemning the Klan for fear that it would permanently split the party. Wendell Willkie, who would go on to become the Republican Party's 1940 presidential candidate, was a Democratic delegate in 1924 and he supported the proposal to condemn the KKK. The bitter fight between the McAdoo and Smith delegates over the KKK set the stage for the nominating ballots to come.
Due to the two-thirds rule governing nominations, neither McAdoo, who briefly got a majority of the votes halfway through the balloting, nor Smith, were able to get the two-thirds majority necessary to win. However, neither candidate would back down, and so the deadlock continued for days on end, as ballot after ballot was taken with neither McAdoo or Smith getting close to enough delegates to win the nomination. Eventually the convention would go to over 100 ballots, becoming the longest-running political convention in American history. Will Rogers, a popular comedian of the era, joked that New York had invited the Democratic delegates to visit the city, not to live there.
Due to the great divide in the Democratic Party, the convention could have gone on for a great deal longer. However, with some state delegations running low on money and unable to stay in the city any longer, on the 100th ballot both Smith and McAdoo mutually withdrew as candidates. This allowed the convention's delegates to search for a compromise candidate acceptable to both Smith and McAdoo supporters.[2] Finally, on the 103rd ballot, the exhausted convention turned to John W. Davis, an obscure former Congressman from West Virginia who later became a name partner at the firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, as the presidential nominee. The Democrats' disarray prompted Will Rogers's famous quip: "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
Governor of Nebraska Charles W. Bryan, William Jennings Bryan's brother, was nominated for vice-president in order to gain the support of the party's rural voters, many of whom still saw Bryan as their leader.
Source: US President - D Convention. Our Campaigns. (March 10, 2011).
[edit] Progressive Party
Senator Robert M. La Follette, who had left the Republican Party and formed his own political party, the Progressive Party, in Wisconsin, was so upset over both political parties choosing conservative candidates that he decided to run as a third-party candidate to give liberals from both parties an alternative. He thus accepted the presidential nomination of the Progressive Party. A longtime champion of labor unions, and an ardent foe of Big Business, La Follette was a fiery orator who had dominated Wisconsin's political scene for more than two decades. Backed by radical farmers, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) labor unions, and Socialists, La Follette ran on a platform of nationalizing cigarette factories and other large industries. He also strongly supported increased taxation on the wealthy and the right of collective bargaining for factory workers. Despite a strong showing in labor strongholds and winning over 16% of the national popular vote, he carried only his home state of Wisconsin in the electoral college.
[edit] General election
[edit] The Fall Campaign
With the disastrous Democratic Convention having badly divided the Democrats, and with the economy booming, there was little doubt that Coolidge would win the election. His campaign slogan, "Keep Cool with Coolidge", was highly popular. Davis carried only the traditionally Democratic Solid South and Oklahoma; due to liberal Democrats voting for La Follette, Davis lost the popular vote to Coolidge by 25.2 percentage points; only Warren Harding, who finished 26.2 points ahead of his nearest competitor in the previous election, did better in this category in competition between multiple candidates (incumbent James Monroe was the only candidate in 1820 and thus took every vote). The Republicans did so well that they carried New York City, a feat they have not repeated since then.
[edit] Results
| Presidential candidate | Party | Home state | Popular vote | Electoral vote |
Running mate | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Pct | Vice-presidential candidate | Home state | Elect. vote | ||||
| Calvin Coolidge | Republican | Massachusetts | 15,723,789 | 54.0% | 382 | Charles G. Dawes | Illinois | 382 |
| John W. Davis | Democratic | West Virginia | 8,386,242 | 28.8% | 136 | Charles W. Bryan | Nebraska | 136 |
| Robert M. La Follette | Progressive | Wisconsin | 4,831,706 | 16.6% | 13 | Burton K. Wheeler | Montana | 13 |
| Herman P. Faris | Prohibition | Missouri | 55,951 | 0.2% | 0 | Marie C. Brehm | California | 0 |
| William Z. Foster | Communist | Massachusetts | 38,669 | 0.1% | 0 | Benjamin Gitlow | New York | 0 |
| Gilbert Nations | American | 24,325 | 0.1% | 0 | Charles Hiram Randall | California | 0 | |
| Other | 60,750 | 0.2% | — | Other | — | |||
| Total | 29,121,432 | 100% | 531 | 531 | ||||
| Needed to win | 266 | 266 | ||||||
Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1924 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
- United States Senate election, 1924
- United States House of Representatives elections, 1924
- History of the United States (1918-1945)
- Progressive Era
[edit] References
- ^ Garland S. Tucker III, The High Tide of American Conservatism: Davis, Coolidge and the 1924 Election (Emerald, 2010)
- ^ Prude, James (1972). "William Gibbs McAdoo and the Democratic National Convention of 1924". The Journal of Southern History (Southern Historical Association) 38 (4): 621–628. doi:10.2307/2206152. JSTOR 2206152.
[edit] Further reading
- Hicks, John Donald (1955). Republican Ascendancy 1921-1933. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0060118857.
- MacKay, K. C. (1947). The Progressive Movement of 1924. New York: Octagon Books. ISBN 0374952442.
- McCoy, Donald R. (1967). Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0700603506.
- Murray, Robert K. (1976). The 103rd Ballot: Democrats and Disaster in Madison Square Garden. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0060131241.
- Ranson, Edward. The Role of Radio in the American Presidential Election of 1924: How a New Communications Technology Shapes the Political Process (Edwin Mellen Press; 2010) 165 pages. Looks at Coolidge as a radio personality, and how radio figured in the campaign, the national conventions, and the election result.
- Unger, Nancy C. (2000). Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 080782545X.
[edit] External links
- 1924 popular vote by counties
- How close was the 1924 election? — Michael Sheppard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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