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| Turnout | 71.87% (of registered voters)  7.70 pp 47.26% (of eligible voters) 10.65 pp[1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 County Results
Harding 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 90–100%
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| Elections in California |
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The 1920 United States presidential election in California took place on November 2, 1920, as part of the 1920 United States presidential election in which all 48 states participated. California voters chose 13 electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting Democratic nominee, Governor James M. Cox of Ohio and his running mate, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, against Republican challenger U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio and his running mate, Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts.
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[2] – 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.[3] Demand in the West for exclusion of Asian immigrants became even stronger than it had been before.[4] Another issue was the anti-Cox position taken by the Ku Klux Klan,[5] at the time a dominant force in Southern Democratic politics, and Cox's inconsistent stance on newly passed Prohibition – he had been a "wet" before, but announced he would support Prohibition enforcement in August.[5]
The West had been the chief presidential battleground ever since the "System of 1896" emerged following that election.[6] For this reason, Cox chose to tour the entire nation[7] and after touring the Pacific Northwest Cox went to California to defend his proposed League of Nations. Cox argued that the League could have stopped the Asian conflicts – like the Japanese seizure of Shandong – but his apparent defence of Chinese immigrants in the Bay Area was very unpopular and large numbers of hecklers attacked the Democratic candidate.[8] Moreover, the only attention Cox received in the Western press was severe criticism.[8]
- ^ "Historical Voter Registration and Participation in Statewide General Elections 1910-2018" (PDF). California Secretary of State. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
- ^ Goldberg, David Joseph; Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s, p. 44 ISBN 0801860059
- ^ Leuchtenburg, William E.; The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932, p. 75 ISBN 0226473724
- ^ Vought, Hans P. ; The Bully Pulpit and the Melting Pot: American Presidents And The Immigrant, 1897-1933, p. 167 ISBN 0865548870
- ^ a b Brake, Robert J.; 'The porch and the stump: Campaign strategies in the 1920 presidential election'; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 55(3), pp. 256-267
- ^ 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
- ^ Faykosh, The Front Porch of the American People (thesis), p. 69
- ^ a b Faykosh, The Front Porch of the American People (thesis), p. 74