1920 United States presidential election in South Dakota

← 1916 November 2, 1920 1924 →

Nominee Warren G. Harding James M. Cox Parley P. Christensen Party Republican Democratic Nonpartisan League Alliance Farmer–Labor Home state Ohio Ohio Illinois Running mate Calvin Coolidge Franklin D. Roosevelt Max S. Hayes Electoral vote 5 0 0 Popular vote 110,692 35,938 34,707 Percentage 60.74% 19.72% 19.04%

County Results Harding   40–50%   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%

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

The1920 United States presidential election in South Dakota took place on November 2, 1920, as part of the1920 United States presidential election in which all contemporary forty-eight states participated. Voters chose five electors, or representatives tothe Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

The 1918 mid-term elections had seen the Midwestern farming community largely desert the Democratic Party due to supposed preferential treatment of Southern farmers:^[1] Democratic seats in the Midwest fell from thirty-four to seventeen,^[2] whilst Scandinavian-Americans were also vigorously opposed to entering the war.^[3] Moreover, Democratic fear of Communism seen in thePalmer Raids and "Red Scare" led to Cox, thenGovernor of Ohio, to ban German-language instruction in public schools in 1919.^[2] Much more critical for German-Americans was the view that outgoing PresidentWoodrow Wilson was deliberately trying to punishGermany andAustria for starting the war, especially via his disregard for theUnited Kingdom's continuing blockade of Germany.^[4] Stressing Harding's German ancestry, the German press drummed up the view that "a vote for Harding is a vote against the persecutions suffered by German-Americans during the war."^[5]

As the campaign began after theRepublican Party had nominatedU.S. SenatorWarren G. Harding ofOhio and the Democratic Party formerOhio governorJames M. Cox, a further blow to the Democrats occurred when the national economy suffered a major downturn following the wartime boom, resulting in plummeting agricultural prices that were especially problematic in the Midwest.^[6] Whereas Cox travelled throughout the nation apart from the "Solid South" during September,^[7] Harding, despite having four times the budget, campaigned from his home inMarion,Ohio. A poll by the giant Rexall drug store chain – which in 1916 had been accurate enough to predict Wilson's razor-thin wins inNew Hampshire andCalifornia^[8] – suggested Harding would win 382 electoral votes,^[9] and at 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.^[10]

The late-October predictions of a complete takeover of the federal government by the Republican Party were entirely born out. So unpopular was Wilson that – although South Dakota was the only Plains state Wilson had lost in 1916 – Cox lost over half the Wilson vote from that election, and lost every county. In fact, Non Partisan League^[a] candidate Parley Parker Christensen finished second ahead of Cox in twenty-nine counties and was only 1,231 votes behind the Democratic candidate in South Dakota as a whole. Aided by German Lutheran hostility towardsProhibition, Christensen gained over 41 percent inHutchinson County, and over thirty percent in three otherEast River counties.

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• United States presidential elections in South Dakota
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