1920 United States presidential election (For the struggle carries on)

The 1920 United States presidential election was the 34th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1920. In the first election held after the end of World War I and the first election after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Republican Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio defeated Socialist Eugene V. Debs of Indiana. This is the first election the Socialist party outperform a major party.

Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson privately hoped for a third term, but party leaders were unwilling to re-nominate the ailing and unpopular incumbent. Former President Theodore Roosevelt had been the front-runner for the Republican nomination, but he died in 1919 leaving Robert M. La Follette as the heir to his progressive legacy. With Wilson out of the running, the Democratic party turned to the little-known dark horse candidates from the state of Ohio, a swing state with a large number of electoral votes. Cox won the 1920 Democratic National Convention on the 44th ballot, defeating William Gibbs McAdoo (Wilson's son-in-law), A. Mitchell Palmer, and several other candidates. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate between the conservative and progressive wings of the party, although the progressive wing of the party walked out and joined with the Socialist party after Frank Orren Lowden was selected as the running mate instead of La Follette.

The election was dominated by the American social and political environment in the aftermath of World War I, which was marked by a hostile response to certain aspects of Wilson's foreign policy. The wartime economic boom had collapsed and the country was deep in a recession resulting in a surge of socialist candidates. Wilson's advocacy for America's entry into the League of Nations in the face of a return to non-interventionist opinion challenged his effectiveness as president, and overseas there were wars and revolutions. At home, the year 1919 was marked by major strikes in the meatpacking and steel industries and large-scale race riots in Chicago and other cities. The Irish Catholic and German communities were outraged at Wilson's perceived favoritism of their traditional enemy Great Britain, and his political position was critically weakened after he suffered a stroke in 1919 that left him severely disabled.

Harding went all in on attacking Cox and Wilson by calling for a "return to normalcy" whilst La Follete campaign for massive economic reforms which included establishing a minimum wage, 8 hour work day and banning child labor due to Debs being in prison at the time. Harding barely won the election with 280 electoral votes mostly due to the west coast and industrial midwest going to Debs. Harding became the first Republican since the end of Reconstruction to win a former state of the Confederacy, Tenessee. Debs won 34.5% of the vote despite being in prison at the time. It was also the first election in which women had the right to vote in all 48 states, which caused the total popular vote to increase dramatically, from 18.5 million in 1916 to 26.8 million in 1920.