Video: 'The American Presidential Election of 1920'

(Tuesday, November 2, 1920, during the 1920 United States presidential election) — In the first U.S. presidential election in which women had the right to vote, Warren G. Harding of Ohio, a Republican, was elected as the 29th President of the United States today, defeating Governor James M. Cox of Ohio, a Democrat.

Harding and his running mate, Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts, won 60.32 percent of the popular vote, resulting in 404 electoral votes.

Cox and his running mate, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, received 34.15 percent of the popular vote, resulting in 127 electoral votes.

Women in every state were allowed to vote for the first time following the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in August 1920 (just in time for the general election).

Video: 'WARREN G. HARDING IS ELECTED - 1920'

On election night, commercial radio broadcast coverage of election returns for the first time. Announcers at KDKA-AM in Pittsburgh read telegraph ticker results over the air as they came in. This single station could be heard over most of the Eastern United States by the small percentage of the population that had radio receivers.

Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson privately hoped for a third term, but party leaders were unwilling to re-nominate the ailing and unpopular incumbent.

While incumbent Vice President Thomas R. Marshall had long held a desire to succeed Wilson, his indecisive handling of the situation around Wilson’s illness and incapacity destroyed any credibility he had as a candidate, and in the end he did not formally put himself forward for the nomination.

Harding and Coolidge would be sworn in for a four-year term of office on March 4, 1921.