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]
In September, several opinion polls were conducted, all predicting that Harding would carry California, which had been extremely close in the twopreceding elections, by over one hundred thousand votes.[10] By the end of October, although no more opinion polls had been published, most observers were even more convinced that the Republicans would take complete control of all branches of government.[11] On election day, Warren Harding carried California by a margin much larger than early polls predicted, winning with 66.20 percent of the vote to James Cox's 24.28 percent. Harding became the first of only two presidential nominees to sweep all of California's counties; the only other one was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the losing 1920 vice-presidential candidate, sixteen years later. Harding's 66.20 percent of the vote was the largest fraction for any presidential candidate in California until Roosevelt won with 66.95 percent in 1936, though his 41.92-percentage-point margin of victory is the largest for any candidate in the state.
^Goldberg, David Joseph; Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s, p. 44 ISBN0801860059
^Leuchtenburg, William E.; The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932, p. 75 ISBN0226473724
^Vought, Hans P. ; The Bully Pulpit and the Melting Pot: American Presidents And The Immigrant, 1897-1933, p. 167 ISBN0865548870
^ abBrake, 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
^ abFaykosh, The Front Porch of the American People (thesis), p. 74
^'Predict Republican Victory in California: Senator Harding Pleases Delegation; Majority of 100,000 Forecast'; Los Angeles Times, September 16, 1920, p. 12
^'Republicans Going to Win: Prospects of a Complete Victory'; The Observer, October 31, 1920, p. 13
^ abMenendez, Albert J.; The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004, pp. 153-155 ISBN0786422173
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