[3] Moreover, Democratic fear of Communism seen in the Palmer Raids and "Red Scare" led to Cox, then Governor of Ohio, to ban German-language instruction in public schools in 1919.

Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio and the Democratic Party former Ohio governor James M. Cox, a further blow to the Democrats – who had never won Minnesota but came tantalizingly close in 1916 when they lost by one vote in 988[6] – occurred when the national economy suffered a major downturn following the wartime boom, resulting in plummeting agricultural prices that were especially problematic in the Midwest.

[7] Whereas Cox travelled throughout the nation apart from the "Solid South" during September,[8] Harding, despite having four times the budget, campaigned from his home in Marion, Ohio.

Debs won nearly a million votes nationally, and 7.62 percent in Minnesota with second place ahead of Cox in six counties, despite the fact that he was incarcerated at the time.

On September 12, 1918, Debs had been convicted on ten counts of sedition in relation to a speech he had given in Canton, Ohio on June 16, 1918, in which he encouraged conscientious objection to World War I.