1920 United States presidential election in Texas

← 1916 November 2, 1920 1924 →

Nominee James M. Cox Warren G. Harding Party Democratic Republican Home state Ohio Ohio Running mate Franklin D. Roosevelt Calvin Coolidge Electoral vote 20 0 Popular vote 288,767 114,538 Percentage 59.34% 23.54%   Nominee James E. Ferguson None Party American Black-and-Tan Republican Home state Texas Running mate William Hough None Electoral vote 0 0 Popular vote 47,968 27,247 Percentage 9.86% 5.60%

County results Cox   30–40%   40–50%   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90%   90–100% Harding   30–40%   40–50%   50–60%   60–70%   70–80% Ferguson   30–40%   40–50%   50–60%

The1920 presidential election in Texas was part of the1920 United States presidential election in which all contemporary forty-eight states voted on November 2, 1920. State voters chose 20 electors, or representatives to theElectoral College, who voted forpresident andvice president.

Ever since statehood,Texas had been very nearly the strongest state for theDemocratic Party owing to its initial history being as aDeep South state with an economy based onslavery. Even during Reconstruction when African-Americans were briefly enfranchised, theRepublican Party won just one statewide election, and afterRedemption and the passing of a new constitution in 1876 the GOP became confined largely to areas of abolitionist German refugee settlement inthe Hill Country,^[1] and to a few South Texas counties where local Republican bosses could outcompete their Democratic equivalents.^[2] TheTerrell Election Law created a poll tax that, from 1902, disenfranchised virtually all remaining African-American voters, the vast majority ofMexican Americans, and most poor whites.^[3] Voter turnout among males over twenty-one fell from over eighty percent to under thirty percent following the poll tax.^[4]

The period following this disfranchisement nonetheless saw a considerable amount of typically "Progressive" reform underGovernorsJames Stephen Hogg andThomas M. Campbell, and despite this progressive faction ceding power in 1906 to the conservatives, Texas proved solid in its support for progressive candidateWoodrow Wilson at the1912 Democratic National Convention.^[5] Another populist, James Ferguson, took the governorship in 1914 on an anti-Prohibition platform, but was impeached for misappropriation of public funds. Nonetheless, this impeachment actually spurred him to run in the ensuing presidential election,^[6] although despite attempting to do so he did not obtain ballot access in any of the other forty-seven states.

In the1916 presidential election, Democrat Woodrow Wilson had established firmer control over the machine-dominated areas of South Texas, but hostility towards Wilson's peace promises caused some losses amongst the German population, whereLee County went Republican for the first time.^[7] By the time the 1920 presidential election season was to begin, German and Irish Americans hated President Wilson for his entry into the war and his role in drafting theTreaty of Versailles and supporting many anti-German groups during the "Red Scare".^[8] HisLeague of Nations proposal was also opposed in the South where isolationism had long been very powerful.^[9]

Despite the hostility towards Wilson andJames M. Cox, the latter of whom had banned German-language instruction in public schools asGovernor of Ohio, amongst German-Americans and some isolationists, Texas was too solidly Democratic for there to be any threat from even the largest popular-vote landslide in United States presidential election history. Although Cox's performance was the worst by a Democrat since the complete disfranchisement of Texas' black population by the 1902 poll tax,^[10] losses from hostility to Wilsonian foreign policy were much less pronounced than in French Louisiana or theOzarks.^[9]

Favorite sonJames E. Ferguson, running on the "American" ticket but not on the ballot in a single other state, gained considerable support amongst those tenants and small-scale owners in East and Central Texas who could pay the poll tax,^[11] but these were few enough that he did not crack double figures for the state as a whole, and his presence cut into support for imprisonedSocialistEugene V. Debs.^[12] Though Ferguson was unsuccessful in the presidential election, the American Party did elect four members to theTexas House of Representatives: Walter J. Kveton ofSealy, Otto F. Menking ofFayetteville, Henry Julius Neinast ofBurton, and John Henry Wessels ofLa Grange.^[13] This would be the last occasion thatZapata County would vote for a Republican presidential candidate until the2020 election,^[14] as it would become the last South Texas machine county to be turned over to Democratic control.

• United States presidential elections in Texas

• 1920 United States presidential election by state
• United States presidential elections in Texas

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