Ever since the Panic of 1893 and the Populist movement, Michigan had been rigidly one-party polity dominated by the Republican Party.[2] In the 1894 elections, the Democratic Party lost all but one seat in the Michigan legislature,[3] and over the four ensuing decades the party would never make major gains there.[2]
The dominance of the culture of the Lower Peninsula by anti-slavery Yankees[4] would be augmented by the turn of formerly Democratic-leaning German Catholics away from that party as a result of the remodelled party’s agrarian and free silver sympathies, which became rigidly opposed by both the upper class and workers who followed them,[5] while the Populist movement eliminated Democratic ties with business and commerce of Michigan and other Northern states.[6] Unlike the other states of the Upper Midwest, the Yankee influence on the culture of the Lower Peninsula was so strong that left-wing third parties did not provide significant opposition to the Republicans, nor was there more than a moderate degree of coordinated factionalism within the hegemonic Michigan Republican Party.[7]
Although by taking a substantial proportion of the 1912 “Bull Moose” vote, incumbent president Woodrow Wilson had managed the best performance in Michigan by a Democrat since Grover Cleveland in 1888,[8] 1918 saw a major reaction against Wilson throughout the Midwest, due to supposed preferential treatment of Southern farmers:[9] Republicans would hold every seat in the State Senate for over a decade after the fall election,[10] as they had between 1895 and 1897 and between 1905 and 1911.
During the 1920 election campaign Michigan gained almost no attention because it had been so firmly Republican over the past quarter century. A poll of four university students showed three voting for Republican candidate Warren G. Harding and one for Democratic opponent James M. Cox.[11] A later poll in October showed that the very small August poll was not inaccurate, with Harding leading by slightly less than three-to-one.[12]The Post-Crescent’s expectations were fulfilled, as Harding won in a landslide, with almost 73 percent of the vote to only 22.27 percent for Cox. Harding nearly swept all of Michigan's 83 counties, only losing Manistee County by a mere five votes, and carried more than 60% of the vote in every other county in the state.
Results
1920 United States presidential election in Michigan[13][14]
With 72.76 percent of the popular, Michigan would prove to be Harding third strongest state in the 1920 election terms of popular vote percentage after North Dakota and Vermont.[16]
Harding received the largest share of the popular vote in a presidential election for Michigan at the time, though that record would be broken four years later. Cox fell more than 3.5 percent below the previous worst Democratic showing by Alton B. Parker from 1904. This was the first of three consecutive elections where Michigan supported a Republican candidate with more than seventy percent of the vote and the only example of any presidential candidate receiving such a high share in the state.[8]
Concurrent with Harding’s triumph in the state, the Republicans would win every single seat in not just the State Senate, but also the State House of Representatives.
^ abBurnham, Walter Dean (December 23, 1981). "The System of 1896: An Analysis". The Evolution of American Electoral Systems. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 178–179. ISBN0313213798.
^"Swamped! The Democrats Drowned Out by a Tremendous Republican Tidal Wave". The L'Anse Sentinel. L'Anse. November 10, 1894. p. 1.
^English, Gustavus P.; Proceedings of the Ninth Republican National Convention (1888), p. 234
^Sundquist, James (December 2010). Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years. Brookings Institution Press. p. 526. ISBN978-0815719090.
^Hansen, John Mark; Shigeo, Hirano; Snyder Jr., James M. (February 27, 2017). "Parties within Parties: Parties, Factions, and Coordinated Politics, 1900-1980". In Gerber, Alan S.; Schickler, Eric (eds.). Governing in a Polarized Age: Elections, Parties, and Political Representation in America. Cambridge University Press. pp. 165–168. ISBN978-1-107-09509-0.
^"Harding Elected By Students of N.Y. University — Practically Every State Is Represented in "Election" Held Recently: Many Women Vote for Him; Cox Runs Second and Debs Polls Nearly as Many as Democrat". The Lima Gazette and The Lima Republican. Lima, Ohio. August 22, 1920. p. 15.
^"Women of Nation Vote for Harding: Rexall Returns Show that They Furnish One-Quarter of Voting Strength". The Post-Crescent. Appleton, Wisconsin. October 8, 1920. p. 8.
