1920 United States presidential election in New Mexico

Main article: 1920 United States presidential election

1920 United States presidential election in New Mexico

←  1916 November 2, 1920 1924  →

Nominee Warren G. Harding James M. Cox Party Republican Democratic Home state Ohio Ohio Running mate Calvin Coolidge Franklin D. Roosevelt Electoral vote 3 0 Popular vote 57,634 46,668 Percentage 54.68% 44.27%

County Results Harding   50-60%   60-70%   70-80% Cox   50-60%   60-70%   70-80%

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

The 1920 United States presidential election in New Mexico took place on November 2, 1920. All contemporary forty-eight States were part of the 1920 United States presidential election. Voters chose three electors to represent them in the Electoral College, which voted for President and Vice President.

During the period between New Mexico's annexation by the United States and statehood, the area was divided between largely Republican machine-run highland regions (which were a mix of Hispanos and Anglo migrants from the Midwest and Northeast) and its firmly Southern Democrat and Baptist "Little Texas" region to the southeast. ^[1] A split in the "Old Guard" of highland Republicanism meant that in the state's inaugural presidential election in 1912 Woodrow Wilson carried the state through overwhelming "Little Texas" and southern desert support over Progressive Theodore Roosevelt and incumbent Republican William Howard Taft. ^[2] Four years later in 1916, Wilson gained sufficient Progressive support to narrowly hold the state against Charles Evans Hughes and the reunited Republican Party; however, in 1918, despite extremely low turnout due to the Spanish flu epidemic ^[3] the reunited GOP regained considerable strength. ^[2]

The following two years saw the Democratic Party's prospects decline still further due to skyrocketing inflation helping make President Wilson very unpopular ^[4] – besides which the President also had major health problems that had left First Lady Edith 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. ^[5] However, owing to its Anglo population's ties to the Southern United States, New Mexico was not nearly so isolationist as Appalachia or the Midwest, ^[6] but the state's farmers did come to believe that the old Confederacy was gaining preferential treatment – to its disadvantage – from the Democratic administration. ^[7]

Neither Harding nor Cox campaigned in this electoral-vote-poor state; however, a powerful group of corporate Republicans campaigned extensively for Harding, ^[8] as did Senator Albert Fall, who was a very close associate of the President-to-be. The corporate and "Old Guard" Republicans ^[2] campaigned on a "Return to Normalcy" following World War I and the tumult of the Bolshevik Revolution and attempts to spread it across Europe. ^[9]

New Mexico was won by Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding, in a strong 10-percentage-point sweep against Ohio Governor James M. Cox. ^[10] Despite this victory, New Mexico was still sixteen percentage points more Democratic than the nation at-large, because the internationalist and traditionally Democratic Plains regions remained extremely loyal to Cox, and Fall's campaign in urban Bernalillo County was so ineffective that that county actually swung 4 percentage points towards the Democrats amidst a national 29-percentage-point swing.

Results

1920 United States presidential election in New Mexico

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Republican	Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge	57,634	54.68%	+8.04
	Democratic	James M. Cox Franklin D. Roosevelt	46,668	44.27%	−5.93
	Farmer–Labor	Parley P. Christensen Max S. Hayes	1,104	1.05%	N/A
Total votes			105,406	100.00%
	Republican win

Results by county

County	Warren Gamail Harding [11] Republican		James Middleton Cox [11] Democratic		Parley Parker Christensen Farmer–Labor		Margin
	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	#
Valencia	74.59%	2,839	24.99%	951	0.42%	16	49.61%	1,888
Doña Ana	66.27%	2,627	33.25%	1,318	0.48%	19	33.02%	1,309
Rio Arriba	65.97%	3,986	34.03%	2,056	0.00%	0	31.94%	1,930
Taos	64.86%	2,519	34.99%	1,359	0.15%	6	29.87%	1,160
Santa Fe	63.92%	3,060	35.51%	1,700	0.56%	27	28.41%	1,360
Socorro	63.16%	3,150	36.23%	1,807	0.60%	30	26.93%	1,343
Torrance	60.28%	1,751	38.73%	1,125	1.00%	29	21.55%	626
McKinley	60.02%	1,525	38.92%	989	1.06%	27	21.09%	536
San Miguel	58.11%	5,535	41.89%	3,990	0.00%	0	16.22%	1,545
Lincoln	57.32%	1,456	41.22%	1,047	1.46%	37	16.10%	409
Sandoval	57.46%	1,194	42.54%	884	0.00%	0	14.92%	310
Sierra	56.79%	862	42.29%	642	0.92%	14	14.49%	220
Guadalupe	56.30%	1,599	43.10%	1,224	0.60%	17	13.20%	375
Union	54.38%	2,930	42.19%	2,273	3.43%	185	12.19%	657
Colfax	54.87%	3,351	44.36%	2,709	0.77%	47	10.51%	642
Grant	53.77%	2,230	45.31%	1,879	0.92%	38	8.46%	351
San Juan	53.39%	985	45.04%	831	1.57%	29	8.35%	154
Mora	52.89%	2,478	46.51%	2,179	0.60%	28	6.38%	299
Otero	51.36%	1,229	45.76%	1,095	2.88%	69	5.60%	134
Bernalillo	50.53%	4,969	48.90%	4,808	0.57%	56	1.64%	161
Chaves	45.54%	1,765	53.66%	2,080	0.80%	31	-8.13%	-315
Luna	44.65%	834	53.53%	1,000	1.82%	34	-8.89%	-166
Hidalgo	44.17%	443	54.94%	551	0.90%	9	-10.77%	-108
Quay	39.15%	1,213	58.52%	1,813	2.32%	72	-19.37%	-600
Eddy	37.42%	982	61.39%	1,611	1.18%	31	-23.97%	-629
De Baca	36.75%	412	61.82%	693	1.43%	16	-25.07%	-281
Roosevelt	31.43%	571	64.83%	1,178	3.74%	68	-33.41%	-607
Curry	27.81%	884	67.41%	2,143	4.78%	152	-39.60%	-1,259
Lea	25.22%	255	72.50%	733	2.27%	23	-47.28%	-478

References

1. Chilton, Lance; New Mexico: A Guide to the Colorful State, p. 95 ISBN   0826307329
2. Hodgson, Illa D. and Garthwaite, Eloyse M.; 'New Mexico's Early Elections: Statehood to New Deal'; New Mexico Historical Review, January 1, 1995; vol. 70, issue 1, pp. 29-46
3. Melzer, Richard; 'A Dark and Terrible Moment: The Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918 in New Mexico', New Mexico Historical Review, 57 (1982), pp. 213-232
4. Goldberg, David Joseph; Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s, p. 44 ISBN   0801860059
5. Leuchtenburg, William E.; The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932, p. 75 ISBN   0226473724
6. Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 461 ISBN   978-0-691-16324-6
7. Morello, John A.; Albert D. Lasker, Advertising, and the Election of Warren G. Harding, p. 64 ISBN   0275970302
8. Sanchez, Joseph P.; Spude, Robert L. and Gomez, Arthur R.; New Mexico: A History, p. 200 ISBN   0806151137
9. Brown, Courtney; Ballots of Tumult: A Portrait of Volatility in American Voting, p. 130 ISBN   0472102508
10. "1920 Presidential General Election Results – New Mexico". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved February 17, 2018.
11. Scammon, Richard M. (compiler); America at the Polls: A Handbook of Presidential Election Statistics 1920-1964; p. 304 ISBN   0405077114