[1] The Democratic Party became entirely uncompetitive outside certain German Catholic counties adjoining Lake Michigan as the upper classes, along with the majority of workers who followed them, completely fled from William Jennings Bryan's agrarian and free silver sympathies.

[8] After a fierce debate the Democratic Party nominated former Congressman John W. Davis of West Virginia,[9] who although West Virginia was a border state whose limited African-American population had not been disenfranchised as happened in all former Confederate States,[10] shared the extreme social conservatism of Southern Democrats of the time.

Davis supported poll taxes, opposed women's suffrage, and believed in strictly limited government with no expansion in nonmilitary fields.

[18] These later polls proved correct, with La Follette carrying Wisconsin with 53.96 percent of the popular vote, but winning no other state.

Winnebago County failed to back the statewide winner for the first time since 1848, which was the first presidential election that the state participated in.