United States presidential election in Minnesota, 1920

United States presidential election in Minnesota, 1920

November 2, 1920

Nominee Warren G. Harding James M. Cox Eugene V. Debs Party Republican Democratic Socialist Home state Ohio Ohio Indiana Running mate Calvin Coolidge Franklin D. Roosevelt Seymour Stedman Electoral vote 12 0 0 Popular vote 519,421 142,994 56,106 Percentage 70.6% 19.4% 7.6%

County Results

President before election Woodrow Wilson Democratic Elected President Warren G. Harding Republican

The 1920 United States presidential election in Minnesota took place on November 2, 1920 in Minnesota as part of the 1920 United States presidential election.

The Republican candidate, U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio won the state over former Ohio governor James M. Cox by a margin of 376,427 votes, or 51.16%. Nationally, Harding won the election, with 404 electoral votes and a landslide 26.17% lead over Cox in the popular vote. Cox did not win a single state north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Nationally, Harding's victory in 1920 still holds the record for the greatest margin of victory in any United States presidential election held since James Monroe's uncontested re-election in 1820. In state, the percentage of Minnesota's popular vote won by Harding in 1920 is second only to Theodore Roosevelt's 74% of the state's popular vote from 1904.

The presidential election of 1920 is also noteworthy for the third party candidacy of the perennial Socialist candidate, Eugene V. Debs. Debs won nearly a million nationally, and 7.62% of the vote in Minnesota, despite the fact that he was incarcerated at the time. On September 12, 1918, Debs had been convicted on ten counts of sedition in relation to a speech he had given in Canton, Ohio on June 16, 1918, in which he encouraged conscientious objection to World War I. Of the five presidential elections in which Debs had been a candidate, 1920 was his second-greatest showing in terms of percentage of the popular vote won—he only did better in 1912. 1920 was also his final appearance on the ballot.

Results

United States presidential election in Minnesota, 1920[1]
Party		Candidate	Votes	Percentage	Electoral votes
	Republican	Warren G. Harding	519,421	70.59%	12
	Democratic	James M. Cox	142,994	19.43%	0
	Socialist	Eugene V. Debs	56,106	7.62%	0
	Prohibition	Aaron S. Watkins	11,489	1.56%	0
	Socialist Labor	William Wesley Cox	5,828	0.79%	0
Totals			735,838	100.00%	12

References

1. "1920 Presidential Election Results, 1920". Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas. Retrieved 2016-10-05.