[2] Another issue was the anti-Cox position taken by the Ku Klux Klan,[3] and Cox's inconsistent stance on newly passed Prohibition – he had been a "wet" but announced he would support Prohibition enforcement in August[3] The West had been the chief presidential battleground ever since the "System of 1896" emerged following that election.

[9] Surveys earlier by Progressive journalist William Allen White had shown that two-thirds of the Kansas population were opposed to Wilson's League of Nations.

[10] At the end of October, two days before the poll, editors estimated a majority of one hundred and twenty thousand votes for Harding in Kansas,[11] although Cox's campaign managers, especially Frank E. Doremus,[12] believed they had a chance of holding the state.

[13] As it turned out, Harding easily won Kansas by a two-to-one majority, fifty percent larger than predicted by the combined polls of editors at the end of October, and a swing of 37 percentage points from Wilson's victory in the state in 1916.

[14] In spite of Cox's two-to-one loss, as of 2020[update] this remains the last presidential election when Kansas voted less Republican than California, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, Washington or Wisconsin.