1920 United States presidential election in Kansas explained

See main article: 1920 United States presidential election.

Election Name:	1920 United States presidential election in Kansas
Country:	Kansas
Flag Year:	1927
Type:	presidential
Ongoing:	no
Previous Election:	1916 United States presidential election in Kansas
Previous Year:	1916
Next Election:	1924 United States presidential election in Kansas
Next Year:	1924
Election Date:	November 2, 1920
Image1:	Warren G Harding-Harris & Ewing crop.jpg
Nominee1:	Warren G. Harding
Party1:	Republican Party (United States)
Home State1:	Ohio
Running Mate1:	Calvin Coolidge
Electoral Vote1:	10
Popular Vote1:	369,268
Percentage1:	64.75%
Nominee2:	James M. Cox
Party2:	Democratic Party (United States)
Home State2:	Ohio
Running Mate2:	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Electoral Vote2:	0
Popular Vote2:	185,464
Percentage2:	32.52%
Map Size:	300px
President
Before Election:	Woodrow Wilson
Before Party:	Democratic Party (United States)
After Election:	Warren G. Harding
After Party:	Republican Party (United States)

The 1920 United States presidential election in Kansas was held on November 2, 1920 as part of the 1920 United States presidential election. Kansas voters chose ten electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Kansas voted for the Republican nominee, Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding, over the Democratic nominee, Ohio Governor James M. Cox. Harding ran with Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, while Cox ran with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York.

Harding won the state by a margin of 32.23 percentage points. By the beginning of 1920 skyrocketing inflation and President Woodrow Wilson's focus upon his proposed League of Nations at the expense of domestic policy had helped make the incumbent President very unpopular^[1] – besides which Wilson also had major health problems that had left First Lady Edith Wilson effectively running the nation.

Political unrest observed in the Palmer Raids and the "Red Scare" further added to the unpopularity of the Democratic Party, since this global political turmoil produced considerable fear of alien revolutionaries invading the country.^[2] Another issue was the anti-Cox position taken by the Ku Klux Klan,^[3] and Cox's inconsistent stance on newly passed Prohibition – he had been a "wet" but announced he would support Prohibition enforcement in August^[3]

The West had been the chief presidential battleground ever since the "System of 1896" emerged following that election.^[4] For this reason, Cox chose to tour the entire nation^[5] but the only attention Cox received in the Western press was severe criticism.^[6] Moreover, at the beginning of the presidential campaign farmers – a critical constituency in Kansas – were highly critical of the likely effect of the Cox platform upon their cost of living.^[7]

Because Wilson had carried Kansas in his two election triumphs in 1912 and 1916. Cox did visit the state in early October,^[8] but was aggressively heckled during his only speeches in the state.^[9] Surveys earlier by Progressive journalist William Allen White had shown that two-thirds of the Kansas population were opposed to Wilson's League of Nations.^[10]

At the end of October, two days before the poll, editors estimated a majority of one hundred and twenty thousand votes for Harding in Kansas,^[11] although Cox's campaign managers, especially Frank E. Doremus,^[12] believed they had a chance of holding the state.^[13]

As it turned out, Harding easily won Kansas by a two-to-one majority, fifty percent larger than predicted by the combined polls of editors at the end of October, and a swing of 37 percentage points from Wilson's victory in the state in 1916. Harding carried all 105 Kansas counties, whereas in 1916 Charles Evans Hughes had carried only 26, although the trend – dramatic as it was – was substantially smaller than Harding's landslides in heavily German-American North and South Dakota.^[14]

In spite of Cox’s two-to-one loss, this remains the last presidential election when Kansas voted less Republican than California, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, Washington or Wisconsin.

Results

Presidential Candidate	Running Mate	Party	Electoral Vote (EV)	Popular Vote (PV)
Warren G. Harding	Calvin Coolidge	Republican	10^[15]	369,268	64.75%
James M. Cox	Franklin D. Roosevelt	Democratic	0	185,464	32.52%
Eugene V. Debs	Seymour Stedman	Socialist	0	15,511	2.72%
Write-ins	—	—	0	75	0.01%

Results by county

1920 United States presidential election in Kansas by county^[16]
County	Warren Gamaliel Harding Republican		James Middleton Cox Democratic		Eugene Victor Debs Socialist		Various candidates Write-ins		Margin		Total votes cast
		%		%		%		%		%
	Allen		5,091		67.68%		2,272		30.20%		159		2.11%						2,819		37.48%		7,522
	Anderson		3,068		62.82%		1,708		34.97%		108		2.21%						1,360		27.85%		4,884
	Atchison		5,872		65.02%		3,082		34.13%		77		0.85%						2,790		30.89%		9,031
	Barber		2,400		66.45%		1,098		30.40%		114		3.16%						1,302		36.05%		3,612
	Barton		3,993		68.77%		1,688		29.07%		125		2.15%						2,305		39.70%		5,806
	Bourbon		4,194		52.09%		3,632		45.11%		225		2.79%						562		6.98%		8,051
	Brown		5,249		72.28%		1,937		26.67%		76		1.05%						3,312		45.61%		7,262
	Butler		6,821		60.56%		4,112		36.51%		331		2.94%						2,709		24.05%		11,264
	Chase		1,659		63.15%		904		34.41%		59		2.25%		5		0.19%		755		28.74%		2,627
	Chautauqua		2,539		68.58%		936		25.28%		227		6.13%						1,603		43.30%		3,702
	Cherokee		5,466		55.83%		3,832		39.14%		492		5.03%						1,634		16.69%		9,790
	Cheyenne		1,079		62.41%		471		27.24%		160		9.25%		19		1.10%		608		35.16%		1,729
	Clark		923		57.98%		610		38.32%		55		3.45%		4		0.25%		313		19.66%		1,592
	Clay		3,521		72.69%		1,155		23.84%		168		3.47%						2,366		48.84%		4,844
	Cloud		4,090		69.82%		1,534		26.19%		234		3.99%						2,556		43.63%		5,858
	Coffey		3,370		64.20%		1,785		34.01%		94		1.79%						1,585		30.20%		5,249
	Comanche		1,121		63.05%		612		34.42%		45		2.53%						509		28.63%		1,778
	Cowley		7,352		59.22%		4,733		38.13%		329		2.65%						2,619		21.10%		12,414
	Crawford		7,957		54.68%		5,362		36.84%		1,234		8.48%						2,595		17.83%		14,553
	Decatur		1,448		51.55%		1,221		43.47%		140		4.98%						227		8.08%		2,809
	Dickinson		5,761		69.10%		2,387		28.63%		189		2.27%						3,374		40.47%		8,337
	Doniphan		3,369		76.46%		978		22.20%		59		1.34%						2,391		54.27%		4,406
	Douglas		6,266		73.23%		2,197		25.67%		94		1.10%						4,069		47.55%		8,557
	Edwards		1,782		70.16%		681		26.81%		77		3.03%						1,101		43.35%		2,540
	Elk		2,253		65.27%		1,110		32.16%		89		2.58%						1,143		33.11%		3,452
	Ellis		2,385		75.17%		740		23.32%		48		1.51%						1,645		51.84%		3,173
	Ellsworth		2,264		65.60%		1,090		31.59%		97		2.81%						1,174		34.02%		3,451
	Finney		1,573		68.96%		619		27.14%		89		3.90%						954		41.82%		2,281
	Ford		3,305		61.90%		1,879		35.19%		155		2.90%						1,426		26.71%		5,339
	Franklin		5,216		65.16%		2,606		32.55%		183		2.29%						2,610		32.60%		8,005
	Geary		2,404		69.56%		962		27.84%		90		2.60%						1,442		41.72%		3,456
	Gove		950		74.92%		285		22.48%		33		2.60%						665		52.44%		1,268
	Graham		1,658		64.06%		762		29.44%		168		6.49%						896		34.62%		2,588
	Grant		339		73.70%		108		23.48%		13		2.83%						231		50.22%		460
	Gray		962		62.18%		507		32.77%		78		5.04%						455		29.41%		1,547
	Greeley		273		69.47%		93		23.66%		27		6.87%						180		45.80%		393
	Greenwood		3,422		68.34%		1,478		29.52%		107		2.14%						1,944		38.83%		5,007
	Hamilton		591		57.66%		371		36.20%		63		6.15%						220		21.46%		1,025
	Harper		2,593		61.65%		1,486		35.33%		127		3.02%						1,107		26.32%		4,206
	Harvey		4,454		63.09%		2,457		34.80%		149		2.11%						1,997		28.29%		7,060
	Haskell		444		69.59%		150		23.51%		44		6.90%						294		46.08%		638
	Hodgeman		945		73.31%		306		23.74%		38		2.95%						639		49.57%		1,289
	Jackson		3,753		70.20%		1,562		29.22%		31		0.58%						2,191		40.98%		5,346
	Jefferson		3,463		68.86%		1,535		30.52%		31		0.62%						1,928		38.34%		5,029
	Jewell		3,925		65.97%		1,899		31.92%		116		1.95%		10		0.17%		2,026		34.05%		5,950
	Johnson		4,325		64.27%		2,303		34.22%		101		1.50%						2,022		30.05%		6,729
	Kearny		617		63.74%		266		27.48%		85		8.78%						351		36.26%		968
	Kingman		2,818		63.18%		1,557		34.91%		85		1.91%						1,261		28.27%		4,460
	Kiowa		1,411		69.51%		587		28.92%		32		1.58%						824		40.59%		2,030
	Labette		6,596		57.94%		4,328		38.02%		460		4.04%						2,268		19.92%		11,384
	Lane		656		63.94%		298		29.04%		72		7.02%						358		34.89%		1,026
	Leavenworth		6,846		65.05%		3,409		32.39%		269		2.56%						3,437		32.66%		10,524
	Lincoln		2,298		69.51%		935		28.28%		73		2.21%						1,363		41.23%		3,306
	Linn		3,189		62.84%		1,764		34.76%		122		2.40%						1,425		28.08%		5,075
	Logan		781		68.51%		312		27.37%		45		3.95%		2		0.18%		469		41.14%		1,140
	Lyon		5,492		61.09%		3,303		36.74%		195		2.17%						2,189		24.35%		8,990
	Marion		3,840		65.82%		1,713		29.36%		281		4.82%						2,127		36.46%		5,834
	Marshall		5,706		71.47%		2,026		25.38%		252		3.16%						3,680		46.09%		7,984
	McPherson		4,870		69.50%		1,926		27.49%		211		3.01%						2,944		42.02%		7,007
	Meade		1,236		70.95%		483		27.73%		23		1.32%						753		43.23%		1,742
	Miami		4,060		60.92%		2,450		36.76%		154		2.31%						1,610		24.16%		6,664
	Mitchell		3,310		68.32%		1,409		29.08%		126		2.60%						1,901		39.24%		4,845
	Montgomery		10,044		62.21%		5,657		35.04%		444		2.75%						4,387		27.17%		16,145
	Morris		3,001		66.19%		1,467		32.36%		66		1.46%						1,534		33.83%		4,534
	Morton		783		72.97%		266		24.79%		24		2.24%						517		48.18%		1,073
	Nemaha		4,655		72.32%		1,731		26.89%		51		0.79%						2,924		45.42%		6,437
	Neosho		5,150		60.82%		3,195		37.73%		122		1.44%						1,955		23.09%		8,467
	Ness		1,402		69.30%		492		24.32%		111		5.49%		18		0.89%		910		44.98%		2,023
	Norton		2,288		65.24%		1,082		30.85%		137		3.91%						1,206		34.39%		3,507
	Osage		4,507		62.80%		2,414		33.64%		256		3.57%						2,093		29.16%		7,177
	Osborne		3,060		74.45%		980		23.84%		70		1.70%						2,080		50.61%		4,110
	Ottawa		2,512		62.94%		1,358		34.03%		121		3.03%						1,154		28.92%		3,991
	Pawnee		2,128		63.98%		1,138		34.22%		60		1.80%						990		29.77%		3,326
	Phillips		2,862		68.60%		1,230		29.48%		80		1.92%						1,632		39.12%		4,172
	Pottawatomie		4,481		76.95%		1,293		22.21%		49		0.84%						3,188		54.75%		5,823
	Pratt		2,722		64.15%		1,433		33.77%		88		2.07%						1,289		30.38%		4,243
	Rawlins		1,236		64.81%		495		25.96%		176		9.23%						741		38.86%		1,907
	Reno		9,649		67.12%		4,385		30.50%		341		2.37%						5,264		36.62%		14,375
	Republic		3,661		67.30%		1,672		30.74%		107		1.97%						1,989		36.56%		5,440
	Rice		3,651		68.95%		1,532		28.93%		106		2.00%		6		0.11%		2,119		40.02%		5,295
	Riley		4,875		73.57%		1,610		24.30%		141		2.13%						3,265		49.28%		6,626
	Rooks		2,143		69.94%		843		27.51%		78		2.55%						1,300		42.43%		3,064
	Rush		2,017		73.43%		605		22.02%		125		4.55%						1,412		51.40%		2,747
	Russell		2,407		75.27%		724		22.64%		67		2.10%						1,683		52.63%		3,198
	Saline		5,554		64.42%		2,808		32.57%		260		3.02%						2,746		31.85%		8,622
	Scott		636		58.51%		379		34.87%		63		5.80%		9		0.83%		257		23.64%		1,087
	Sedgwick		16,642		59.15%		10,998		39.09%		494		1.76%						5,644		20.06%		28,134
	Seward		1,290		61.52%		722		34.43%		85		4.05%						568		27.09%		2,097
	Shawnee		14,814		66.28%		7,217		32.29%		318		1.42%						7,597		33.99%		22,349
	Sheridan		1,194		69.54%		477		27.78%		44		2.56%		2		0.12%		717		41.76%		1,717
	Sherman		1,066		54.33%		789		40.21%		107		5.45%						277		14.12%		1,962
	Smith		3,251		66.10%		1,535		31.21%		132		2.68%						1,716		34.89%		4,918
	Stafford		2,779		70.04%		1,057		26.64%		132		3.33%						1,722		43.40%		3,968
	Stanton		269		73.10%		89		24.18%		10		2.72%						180		48.91%		368
	Stevens		876		69.47%		346		27.44%		39		3.09%						530		42.03%		1,261
	Sumner		5,830		60.49%		3,454		35.84%		354		3.67%						2,376		24.65%		9,638
	Thomas		1,046		54.56%		747		38.97%		124		6.47%						299		15.60%		1,917
	Trego		1,299		75.04%		395		22.82%		37		2.14%						904		52.22%		1,731
	Wabaunsee		2,859		77.63%		782		21.23%		42		1.14%						2,077		56.39%		3,683
	Wallace		632		70.38%		203		22.61%		63		7.02%						429		47.77%		898
	Washington		4,390		76.06%		1,287		22.30%		95		1.65%						3,103		53.76%		5,772
	Wichita		422		73.91%		127		22.24%		22		3.85%						295		51.66%		571
	Wilson		4,024		66.23%		1,768		29.10%		284		4.67%						2,256		37.13%		6,076
	Woodson		2,253		68.71%		944		28.79%		82		2.50%						1,309		39.92%		3,279
	Wyandotte		19,294		57.25%		13,737		40.76%		671		1.99%						5,557		16.49%		33,702
Totals	369,268	64.75%	185,464	32.52%	15,511	2.72%	75	0.01%	183,804	32.23%	570,318

See also

• United States presidential elections in Kansas

Notes and References

1. Book: Goldberg, David Joseph. Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s. 44. 0801860059.
2. Book: Leuchtenburg, William E.. The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932. 75. 0226473724.
3. Brake. Robert J.. The porch and the stump: Campaign strategies in the 1920 presidential election. Quarterly Journal of Speech. 55. 3. 256–267.
4. Faykosh, Joseph D., Bowling Green State University; The Front Porch of the American People: James Cox and the Presidential Election of 1920 (thesis), p. 68
5. Faykosh, The Front Porch of the American People (thesis), p. 69
6. Faykosh, The Front Porch of the American People (thesis), p. 74
7. News: Hassett. William D.. Harding for Farmer: Says Cox Just Endorses G.O.P. as to Agricultural Chief. The Washington Post. July 13, 1920. 1.
8. News: Calls "Drys" Unfair: Cox Asserts Wayne B. Wheeler "Protects" Harding. The Washington Post. September 27, 1920. 1.
9. Murphy, Kevin C.; Columbia University, Uphill All the Way: The Fortunes of Progressivism, 1919-1929 (thesis), p. 333
10. Murphy; Uphill All the Way (thesis), p. 94
11. 'Harding 363 Votes, Cox 168, Is Result Obtained From Estimates by 47 Editors'; Special to The Washington Post, October 31, 1920, p. 1
12. News: Claims Indiana for Cox: Doremus Says Tide Is Turning to Him in Kansas and Nebraska. New York Times. October 22, 1920. 3.
13. News: Both Parties Claim National Victory: Dispatches from Many States Indicate Trend as the Campaign Closes. New York Times. October 31, 1920. E1.
14. [Kevin Phillips (political commentator)|Phillips, Kevin P.]
15. Web site: 1920 Presidential General Election Results – Kansas. Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas . 30 October 2019.
16. Scammon, Richard M. (compiler); America at the Polls: A Handbook of Presidential Election Statistics 1920-1964; pp. 165-166