1924 United States presidential election
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531 members of the Electoral College 266 electoral votes needed to win | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 48.9% 0.3 pp | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Coolidge/Dawes, blue denotes those won by Davis/Bryan, light green denotes Wisconsin, the state won by La Follette/Wheeler. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 1924. The Republican ticket of incumbent President Calvin Coolidge and Director of the Bureau of the Budget Charles Dawes defeated the Democratic ticket of John Davis and Nebraska Governor Charles Bryan and the Progressive ticket of Senator Robert La Follette and Senator Burton Wheeler. Coolidge was the second vice president, after Theodore Roosevelt, to ascend to the presidency and then win a full term.
Coolidge had been vice president under Warren G. Harding and became president in 1923 upon Harding's unexpected death. Coolidge was given credit for a booming economy at home and no visible crises abroad, and he faced little opposition at the 1924 Republican National Convention. The Democratic Party nominated former Congressman and ambassador to the United Kingdom John W. Davis of West Virginia. Davis, a compromise candidate, triumphed on the 103rd ballot of the 1924 Democratic National Convention after a deadlock between supporters of William Gibbs McAdoo and Al Smith. Dissatisfied by the conservatism of both major party candidates, the newly formed Progressive Party nominated Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin.
The election has been characterized as marking the "high tide of American conservatism", as both major-party candidates campaigned for limited government, reduced taxes, and less regulation. By contrast, La Follette called for the gradual nationalization of the railroads and increased taxes on the wealthy, policies that foreshadowed the New Deal.
Coolidge won a landslide victory, taking majorities in both the popular vote and the Electoral College and winning almost every state outside of the Solid South (while still making headway by winning Kentucky). La Follette won 16.6% of the popular vote, a strong showing for a third-party candidate, while Davis won the lowest share of the popular vote of any Democratic nominee in history. This is the most recent election to date in which a third-party candidate won a non-Southern state, and the last time a Republican won the presidency without winning any of the former Confederate states. It was also the US election with the lowest per capita voter turnout since records were kept. Also, it was the only election from 1868 to 1952 in which none of the candidates were from New York or Ohio.