Biggest GOP win in 1920?

OTL the Republicans won 60.3% to 34.1%. Harding even won a couple of southern states (OK and TN).

Harding was a pretty bland candidate whose campaign was "A Return to Normalcy".

Let's say...
1. The Republicans have a more charismatic and dynamic candidate. Leonard Wood perhaps?
2. The public finds out about Woodrow Wilson's stroke and the sordid details regarding his wife's semi-running of the Executive Branch

How big a win could it be? Over 70%?
 
OTL the Republicans won 60.3% to 34.1%. Harding even won a couple of southern states (OK and TN).

Harding was a pretty bland candidate whose campaign was "A Return to Normalcy".

Let's say...
1. The Republicans have a more charismatic and dynamic candidate. Leonard Wood perhaps?
2. The public finds out about Woodrow Wilson's stroke and the sordid details regarding his wife's semi-running of the Executive Branch

How big a win could it be? Over 70%?

I doubt they could win by 70%. No presidential candidate has won by that great a margin in the popular vote since James Monroe. Maybe with a war hero like Wood, the GOP could've done a couple of percentage points better. But the fact is there's still a core Democratic vote that won't support a Republican no matter what, and that would prevent Wood or any candidate from getting 70%.

Honestly, 60% of the vote is about as good as any candidate can do in post-1820s presidential politics.
 
The only way for the GOP to get a bigger electoral vote is for there to be no rumors about Harding's supposed African American ancestry. Not that the rumors changed many votes but they were probably enough to cost Harding KY. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_United_States_presidential_election The only ten other states Cox carried he carried by at least 13 points so it is hard to see any Republican carrying them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_United_States_presidential_election Note that those same ten states went for Davis by landslide margins in 1924. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1924_United_States_presidential_election The only way to break the hold of the Democracy on the ex-Confederate states other than TN is for the Democrats to nominate a Catholic wet like Smith.

Harding carried every county in the three Pacific Coast states and every county in New York state--including all five boroughs of New York City! It's really hard for me to imagine a Republican doing any better than that.
 
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The only way for the GOP to get a bigger electoral vote is for there to be no rumors about Harding's supposed African American ancestry. Not that the rumors changed many votes but they were probably enough to cost Harding KY. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_United_States_presidential_election

Why were the rumors about Harding's supposed African-American ancestry enough cost him Kentucky but not Tennessee? I'm pretty sure that Tennessee was even more racist than Kentucky.
 
Why were the rumors about Harding's supposed African-American ancestry enough cost him Kentucky but not Tennessee? I'm pretty sure that Tennessee was even more racist than Kentucky.

The man who allegedly wrote the pamphlet (or at least did some of the research for it) claiming that Harding had black ancestors was (like Cox) from southern Ohio (Dayton). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Estabrook_Chancellor I imagine that the rumors circulated most intensely not only in southern Ohio but in nearby northern Kentucky.

(Further research: "FOR months the story of Harding's Negro ancestry had an underground circulation in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky..." https://www.google.com/search?biw=1744&bih=801&tbm=bks&ei=1D1pXbnSOpCuswXXiKmACg&q="for+months+the+story+of+harding's"&oq="for+months+the+story+of+harding's"&gs_l=psy-ab.3...3408.9174.0.9382.3.3.0.0.0.0.158.428.0j3.3.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.1.157...33i299k1.0.9zYiNVEEOOI#spf=1567178209514 These after all were hotly contested states--McKinley had carried KY in 1896 and even Hughes had done respectably there in 1916. By contrast TN had never voted Republican in a presidential election and there really wan't much point to spreading rumors there--if the state was even close, the Democrats were doomed. But I doubt that such calculations were decisive. It was just that it was a rumor that had originated in Ohio and therefore most readily spread there and in adjacent states. As I said, the impact of the rumor was probably slight, but KY was extremely close so even a slight effect could change the result there.)
 
I've often felt 1920 was really the biggest partisan win, at least after the 1820s

If you'd had AA voters enfranchised in the South and if the Southern white voters had cast their ballots based on real ideology (IE isolationism, back to normalcy, etc) it is likely Harding would have carried all 48 states and gone upwards of 63-65% of the popular vote.
 
I think that Cox's 34.1 percent is about as bad as a Democratic presidential candidate could have done in a more-or-less two party race. Now it is true that Davis did even worse in 1924 with 28.8 percent--but that was a three-way race, and while La Follette undoubtedly cut into both the Democratic and Republican vote, he seems to have hurt the Democrats more--indeed in much of the West the McAdoo Democrats deserted Davis en masse for La Follette. In California, Cox's 24.28 percent (to Harding's 66.20) was bad enough--but Davis got 8.3 percent! (Coolidge got 57.20, La Follette 33.13 in the state).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1924_United_States_presidential_election
 
Why were the rumors about Harding's supposed African-American ancestry enough cost him Kentucky but not Tennessee? I'm pretty sure that Tennessee was even more racist than Kentucky.
Did any state lose out of Harding because he figured he was too much of a thirsty boi?
 
Harding carried every county in the three Pacific Coast states and every county in New York state--including all five boroughs of New York City! It's really hard for me to imagine a Republican doing any better than that.

BTW, sorry for the late reply but, why did Harding win a series of Southern Louisiana parishes? See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/1920nationwidecountymapshadedbyvoteshare.svg. How did he win such Deep Southern counties? Unlike some of the other Southern counties that he won, those parishes weren't historically anti-secession mountainous areas.
 
I doubt if changing the Republican candidate will make much difference. Harding was ideal. After the tumultuous events of the last few years, the blander the better.

OTOH, if the Democratic nominee is McAdoo or someone else closely identified with Wilson, then Democratic turnout might drop, giving the GOP a higher percentage of the popular vote, but not necessarily an increase in their absolute numbers.
 
Emperor Julian had Willson succeed in deadlocking the Democratic convention and getting himself nominated for a third term in Ruins of an American Party System. It's the first step on a path that effectively destroys the Democrats outside of the deep south.
 
How much bigger could it possibly be?

Harding won the biggest landslide in the history of popular voting for President up to that time. Incidentally, Election Day, 2 November 1920, was Harding's 55th birthday. What a way to celebrate!
 
This probably will not change the Electoral College count much, due to the Solid South, but a stronger showing for the Socialists and perhaps other left-wing parties could have conceivably brought the Democratic popular vote share to under thirty percent. Imagine how humiliating it would be the for the Democrats if they lose to the Republican presidential candidate by nearly forty points.

Assuming that this is a relatively uniform swing, left-ward vote-splitting and a stronger GOP showing generally could lead to an even more lopsided performance in the South. Assuming that all Democrats who won their races by, say, six points or under lose here, then the party as a whole loses twenty-three seats in that chamber, including complete wipe-outs in states such as Illinois, Maryland, and Missouri. Heck, even future Speaker of the House William Bankhead would have lost his seat under those circumstances. The Republicans would have picked up all of those seats, with the potential exception of a Farmer-Labor win in New York's 18th congressional district had enough left-wingers abandoned the Democrats. Heck, if the far-left parties do well enough nationally for this reason, then Victor Berger might hold onto his seat in Wisconsin.
 
BTW, sorry for the late reply but, why did Harding win a series of Southern Louisiana parishes? See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/1920nationwidecountymapshadedbyvoteshare.svg. How did he win such Deep Southern counties? Unlike some of the other Southern counties that he won, those parishes weren't historically anti-secession mountainous areas.

These were sugar parishes. Sugar planters were among the few protectionists in the South, and of course the Republicans were the party of protection. "The significant of the tariff issue is seen not only in the Whig, the Lily White Republican, and Parkerite proclivities of South Louisianians, but also in the election of a Progressive congressman in 1914 and in Warren Harding's carrying fifteen sugar parishes in the 1920 presidential race." https://www.google.com/search?biw=1...45...33i299k1.0.aDkZEr7yp9I#spf=1571098068124

FWIW, these were also Cajun parishes. (The very names of Acadia and Evangeline parishes should give you a hint; and Lafayette has been called "the capital of Cajun country." Vermilion, Terrebonne, LaFourche, St. James etc. are also heavily Cajun.) Now why Cajun parishes should be more Republican than non-Cajun ones I don't know, apart from the protection issue. There were fewer African Americans in Cajun country than in the cotton parishes of northern Louisiana, so there may have been less obsession with race, making voting for a Republican at least thinkable.

BTW, in 1928, when the Democrats nominated a Catholic, Al Smith, Lafourche parish went from 24.4 D in 1920 to 89.1 in 1928; St. James went from 39.1 to 92.1! https://books.google.com/books?id=B9nFwo5B1BQC&pg=PA100
 
These were sugar parishes. Sugar planters were among the few protectionists in the South, and of course the Republicans were the party of protection. "The significant of the tariff issue is seen not only in the Whig, the Lily White Republican, and Parkerite proclivities of South Louisianians, but also in the election of a Progressive congressman in 1914 and in Warren Harding's carrying fifteen sugar parishes in the 1920 presidential race." https://www.google.com/search?biw=1724&bih=730&tbm=bks&ei=hwylXe-VEsqAtgWjsKKIAQ&q="proclivities+of+South+Louisianians"+"sugar+parishes"+1920&oq="proclivities+of+South+Louisianians"+"sugar+parishes"+1920&gs_l=psy-ab.3...323667.330518.0.331281.7.7.0.0.0.0.271.907.0j3j2.5.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..2.1.145...33i299k1.0.aDkZEr7yp9I#spf=1571098068124

FWIW, these were also Cajun parishes. (The very names of Acadia and Evangeline parishes should give you a hint; and Lafayette has been called "the capital of Cajun country." Vermilion, Terrebonne, LaFourche, St. James etc. are also heavily Cajun.) Now why Cajun parishes should be more Republican than non-Cajun ones I don't know, apart from the protection issue. There were fewer African Americans in Cajun country than in the cotton parishes of northern Louisiana, so there may have been less obsession with race, making voting for a Republican at least thinkable.

BTW, in 1928, when the Democrats nominated a Catholic, Al Smith, Lafourche parish went from 24.4 D in 1920 to 89.1 in 1928; St. James went from 39.1 to 92.1! https://books.google.com/books?id=B9nFwo5B1BQC&pg=PA100

Thanks for the clarification. Regardless, I already knew that those parishes were Cajun but didn't see a reason for Cajuns voting more Republican. Your explanation that they were protectionist and that their parishes had few blacks makes sense.
 
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I doubt if changing the Republican candidate will make much difference. Harding was ideal. After the tumultuous events of the last few years, the blander the better.

OTOH, if the Democratic nominee is McAdoo or someone else closely identified with Wilson, then Democratic turnout might drop, giving the GOP a higher percentage of the popular vote, but not necessarily an increase in their absolute numbers.

I doubt that McAdoo or any other plausible Democratic candidate (except Al Smith if you consider him plausible) could have done worse than Cox. As I wrote here a while back:

"Granted that the Democrats' cause in 1920 was hopeless anyway, Cox was an astonishingly bad candidate. In his last campaign address he denounced African Americans and German Americans for supporting the GOP and announced that "Every traitor in America will vote tomorrow for Warren G. Harding." "People walked out of the hall." https://books.google.com/books?id=Uia4A04q8dMC&pg=PT378

"(Cox was incidentally just about the worst candidate for getting any German-American votes. As governor of Ohio, he insisted that teaching in German be banned in private and parochial schools as well as public ones, over the opposition of the Catholic Church. Then he chose FDR as his running mate--and German Americans rightly or wrongly assumed that this Roosevelt shared the views of the other one toward Germany. Small wonder Cox got 16.17 percent of the vote in WI--not all that far ahead of Debs!--18.19 percent in ND (which Wilson had actually won in 1916) etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_United_States_presidential_election)" (Of course no Democratic candidate was going to get very many African American votes, but at least McAdoo would have his record as wartime administrator of the railroads where he ordered the railroads to pay African Americans and women equal pay with white men for equal work. This was actually done at the request of the railroad brotherhoods who no doubt reasoned that if the railroads had to pay blacks equal wages, they wouldn't hire them. Nevertheless, McAdoo's order was applauded by African American leaders. McAdoo would also probably have had stronger labor support than Cox.)

Also, Cox had the reputation of a relative conservative (despite a mildly progressive record as governor of Ohio) and a "wet" on Prohibition which hurt him with Bryanites in the West (McAdoo might have done better there, though probably without winning any electoral votes in that region) without really helping him in the Northeast. Some ethnic voters were glad that the Democrats had nominated Cox rather than McAdoo whom they associated with Wilson--but as soon as Cox came out for the Versailles Treaty, they concluded he was just as bad. As a study of the politics of Providence, RI's "Little Italy" notes:

"In view of Wilson's stubborn rejection of their ancestral county's claims, Italian Americans welcomed the defeat of the president's son-in-law and apparent political heir, William McAdoo, in the contest for the Democratic nomination for the White House and were initially satisfied with the selection of James M. Cox as the Democratic presidential candidate. Such an early approval suddenly turned into disillusionment as soon as Cox declared that he adhered to Wilson's vision of U.S. foreign policy. He referred primarily to the acceptance of American participation in the League of Nations and did not elaborate on his stand on the issue of Fiume. But, in the eyes of many Italian Americans, his words were sufficient to make the 1920 presidential race into a sort of referendum on the lot of the Croatian port or, at least, to perceive that year's elections as an opportunity to retaliate against the incumbent president for his disregard of the interests and wishes of the Italian government. As L'Eco del Rhode Island put it, "the major difference in the two platforms is to either accept or destroy Wilson's policy. It goes without saying that, deep in our hearts, all we Italians are ready to fight for the destruction of his false concept of democracy." Similarly, Il Corriere del Rhode Island remarked that "Cox's statement is enough to lead the Italians to resort to all their strength in order to oppose Cox and all the other candidates who reveal even the slightest support for Wilson's programs. The Italians must not forget and will never forget that, if Italy—after her heroic and titanic efforts—is still struggling in the tentacles of foul Molochs who are trying to stifle her with their voracious speculations..."" https://books.google.com/books?id=vtP0KA_L9WAC&pg=PA52

In the very unlikely event that the Democrats nominate Al Smith, they will undoubtedly do worse than Cox did in the Electoral College (though not necessarily in the popular vote) because Smith is almost certain to lose some southern electoral votes Cox got (KY definitely; NC and some other states very probably), while he is unlikely to carry any northern states, even the most Catholic ones like RI or MA, though he will certainly improve on Cox's showing there).
 
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