It Wasn't Just the Economy, Stupid: How Calvin Coolidge Won the 1924 Presidential Election

ABSTRACT President Calvin Coolidge won a landslide victory in the three‐way presidential race of 1924, against a fractured Democratic Party and Robert La Follette's Progressive insurgency. Conventional wisdom has it that Coolidge was the passive beneficiary of a strong economy and a divided opposition. After all, how could a candidate who mostly stayed silent and off the campaign trail deserve any credit for winning? This article uses qualitative and quantitative evidence to interrogate the familiar narrative about Coolidge's election. My empirical analysis confirms that Coolidge benefited from economic growth, La Follette's third‐party candidacy, and divisions within the Democratic Party. However, other factors, including the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, also contributed to the Republican landslide. Qualitative evidence from the 1924 campaign indicates that Coolidge and the Republican Party deserve some credit for the election's outcome, given their extensive efforts to prime favorable evaluations of the national economy.