The 1924 United States presidential election in Alabama took place on November 4, 1924, as part of the nationwide presidential election, which was held throughout all contemporary forty-eight states. Voters chose twelve representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
Since the 1890s, Alabama had been effectively a one-party state ruled by the Democratic Party. Disenfranchisement of almost all African-Americans and a large proportion of poor whites via poll taxes, literacy tests[1] and informal harassment had essentially eliminated opposition parties outside of UnionistWinston County and a few nearby northern hill counties that had been Populist strongholds.[2] The only competitive statewide elections became Democratic Party primaries that were limited by law to white voters. Unlike most other Confederate states, however, soon after black disenfranchisement Alabama's remaining white Republicans made rapid efforts to expel blacks from the state Republican Party.[3] Indeed, under Oscar D. Street, who ironically was appointed state party boss as part of the pro-Taft“black and tan” faction in 1912,[4] the state GOP would permanently turn “lily-white”, with the last black delegates from the state at any Republican National Convention serving in 1920.[3]
The 1920 election, aided by isolationism in Appalachia[5] and the whitening of the state GOP,[6] saw the Republicans gain their best presidential vote share in Alabama since 1884,[7] while the GOP even exceed forty percent in the House of Representatives races for the 4th, 7th and 10th congressional districts.[5] However, isolationist sentiment in Appalachia would ease after the election of Warren G. Harding[5] and funding issues meant the Republicans would not run a candidate for any Alabama congressional district in 1922.[8]
With the ebbing of isolationist sentiment and a conservative Southern Democrat supportive of poll taxes and opposed to women's suffrage in John W. Davis of West Virginia nominated after an extremely prolonged convention,[9] neither Davis nor incumbent Republican President Calvin Coolidge nor “La Follette/Wheeler” candidate Robert M. La Follette visited Alabama.[10] No polls were taken in the state, which had given every Democrat since 1876 over sixty percent, and ultimately Davis won Alabama with over sixty-seven percent of the vote. Despite the severe impediments of Alabama's cumulative poll tax, La Follette did reach into double digits in industrialised Jefferson, Baldwin, and Morgan Counties, but overall he polled only just under five percent of Alabama's ballots, making it his eighth-weakest state.[11]
Results
1924 United States presidential election in Alabama[12]
^ abcdefghiIn this county where La Follette ran second ahead of Coolidge, margin goven is Davis vote minus La Follette vote and percentage margin Davis percentage minus La Follette percentage.
^Sources vary in the Republican total for this county.
^ abHeersink, Boris; Jenkins, Jeffery A. (2020). Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968. Cambridge University Press. pp. 251–253. ISBN9781107158436.
^See "G.O.P. Funds Are Reported Short: Forces "Counted On" Disappoint Republican Political Managers". The Birmingham News. Birmingham, Alabama. August 19, 1922. p. 5.
^Newman, Roger K. (January 2009). The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law. Yale University Press. p. 153. ISBN978-0300113006.
^"Davis Closes His Campaign in West and Moves South; Helping Hand Across Sea Might Save Europe, Nominee Claims — Goes to Nashville To renew Attack on G.O.P.; From Tennessee He Returns North for Tour of Four States". The Birmingham News. Birmingham, Alabama. October 19, 1924. p. 1.
^"Vote for Presidential Electors, November 4, 1924". Alabama Official and Statistical Register. State of Alabama Department of Archives and History. 1927.
