Cox only did well in the South, which at the time was solidly Democratic.
Harding barely mentioned Cox during the race, choosing instead to campaign against his predecessor, Wilson and to promise a "return to normalcy". The strategy was a success for Harding in a nation that was tired of the events that occured from 1912 to 1920, which had included constant turmoil and strife.
Warren G. Harding.
Harding hadn't really started out wanting to be President, however. He was talked into it by party leadership following the race that developed after Theodore Roosevelt's January 1919 death. Roosevelt, at that point, didn't really have his heart in the race either, but he would have run and, but for his death, would almost certainly have won as a Progressive Republican. Harding won promising that things would return to normal.
He wouldn't live out his term, dying in office from a heart attack in 1923. At the time of his death he was a well liked President. Scandals later associated with Harding were not known during his lifetime, including the story of his two mistresses, one former and one ongoing, which had resulted in the birth of his only child in 1919.
KDKA broadcast election results from Pittsburg, the first time that a radio station had done so. KDKA, which was owned by Westinghouse, is regarded as the world's first commercial radio station, although that claim can be disputed.
Voting on this day resulted in the Ocoee Massacre, an assault on African American voters. The assault resulted in the deaths of at least 30 black Floridians and the destruction of the black quarters of the town. Survivors were driven from the town.
Voting related death, of a sort, also came to James Daly, an Irish born solder of the Connaught Rangers who had figured in a mutiny in India earlier that year. For his role in the mutiny he was executed by the British Army. While nineteen soldiers of the unit received the death sentence for their role an effort that was obviously doomed from the onset, Daly's was the only one carried out.
