The 1920 presidential election in Texas was part of the 1920 United States presidential election in which all contemporary forty-eight states voted on November 2, 1920. State voters chose 20 electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
Background Ever since statehood, Texas had been very nearly the strongest state for the Democratic Party owing to its initial history being as a Deep South state with an economy based on slavery. Even during Reconstruction when African-Americans were briefly enfranchised, the Republican Party won just one statewide election, and after Redemption and the passing of a new constitution in 1876 the GOP became confined largely to areas of abolitionist German refugee settlement in the Hill Country,Bass, Jack; The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequence Since 1945, p. 25 and to a few South Texas counties where local Republican bosses could outcompete their Democratic equivalents.Weeks, O. Douglas; 'The Texas Mexican and the Politics of South Texas'; The American Political Science Review, vol. 24, no. 3 (August 1930), pp. 606–627 The Terrell Election Law created a poll tax that, from 1902, disenfranchised virtually all remaining African-American voters, the vast majority of Mexican Americans, and most poor whites.Davidson, Chandler; Race and Class in Texas Politics, p. 21 Voter turnout among males over twenty-one fell from over eighty percent to under thirty percent following the poll tax.Davison; Race and Class in Texas Politics, p. 24
The period following this disfranchisement nonetheless saw a considerable amount of typically "Progressive" reform under Governors James Stephen Hogg and Thomas M. Campbell, and despite this progressive faction ceding power in 1906 to the conservatives, Texas proved solid in its support for progressive candidate Woodrow Wilson at the 1912 Democratic National Convention.Grantham, Dewey W.; The Life and Death of the Solid South: A Political History, pp. 50–52 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,Warren, Kenneth F.; Encyclopedia of U.S. Campaigns, Elections, and Electoral Behavior, p. 788 although despite attempting to do so he did not obtain ballot access in any of the other forty-seven states.
In the 1916 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, where Lee County went Republican for the first time.Murrin, John M.; Johnson, Paul E.; McPherson, James M.; Fahs, Alice; and Gerstle Gary; Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People (Concise Edition), p. 532 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 the Treaty of Versailles and supporting many anti-German groups during the "Red Scare".Hough, Jerry F.; Changing Party Coalitions: The Mystery of the Red State-blue State Alignment; pp. 83–86 His League of Nations proposal was also opposed in the South where isolationism had long been very powerful.Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 211
Despite the hostility towards Wilson and James M. Cox, the latter of whom had banned German-language instruction in public schools as Governor 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,Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas; Presidential General Election Results Comparison – Texas losses from hostility to Wilsonian foreign policy were much less pronounced than in French Louisiana or the Ozarks.
American party
Favorite son James 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,Bünger, Walter L.; The Path to a Modern South. Northeast Texas between Reconstruction and the Great Depression, p. 197 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 imprisoned Socialist Eugene V. Debs. Though Ferguson was unsuccessful in the presidential election, the American Party did elect four members to the Texas House of Representatives: Walter J. Kveton of Sealy, Otto F. Menking of Fayetteville, Henry Julius Neinast of Burton, and John Henry Wessels of La Grange.
Results This would be the last occasion that Zapata County would vote for a Republican presidential candidate until the 2020 election,Menendez, Albert J.; The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004, pp. 314, 319 as it would become the last South Texas machine county to be turned over to Democratic control. 1920 United States presidential election in TexasDave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas; 1920 Presidential General Election Results – TexasPartyCandidateVotesPercentageElectoral votesDemocratic James M. Cox 288,767 59.34% 20Republican Warren G. Harding 114,538 23.54% 0American James E. Ferguson 47,968 9.86% 0Black and Tan Republican No Candidate 27,247 5.60% 0Socialist Eugene V. Debs 8,121 1.67% 0 Totals 486,824 100.00% 20 Voter turnout (voting age) —
Results by county