La Follette's support base was primarily among rural German and Scandinavian Americans,[1] particularly German Catholics, and he possessed little appeal in the Northeast outside a few New York and Boston anti-Prohibition precincts despite the area's large Catholic population.

This was especially true in Rhode Island where La Follette's opposition to the League of Nations was severely unpopular,[2] and consequently Rhode Island was La Follette's sixth-weakest state and weakest outside the former Confederacy where the lower classes were almost entirely disfranchised.

He was the epitome of a traditional New England Yankee, having been born in the small-town of Plymouth Notch, Vermont, and establishing his political career nearby as Governor of Massachusetts.

The economic boom and social good feelings of the Roaring Twenties under popular Republican leadership virtually guaranteed Calvin Coolidge an easy win in the state against the conservative Southern Democrat Davis.

Although Davis’ reticence on the Ku Klux Klan was opposed by large Catholic populations in Rhode Island, his status as the solitary pro-League of Nations candidate helped him in Rhode Island with its large immigrant population.