1920 Democratic Party presidential primaries

From March 9 to June 5, 1920, voters of the Democratic Party elected delegates to the 1920 Democratic National Convention, for the purposing of choosing a nominee for president in the 1920 United States presidential election.

The race for delegates was made under a cloud of uncertainty because the party's two leading names, President Woodrow Wilson and three-time nominee William Jennings Bryan, withheld their intentions; both men privately hoped for the nomination, but neither's name was formally submitted before the voters or the convention as a candidate.

The delegate elections were inconclusive, with Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, and Ohio governor James A. Cox leading the candidate field. With no clear front-runner, many states withheld their delegates from any one candidate, instead sending an uncommitted slate of delegates or preferring to back a favorite son on the first ballot. At the convention, Cox was ultimately nominated on the forty-fourth ballot.

Candidates

 * Governor James M. Cox of Ohio
 * Former Ambassador to Germany James Watson Gerard of New York
 * Governor Edward I. Edwards of New Jersey
 * Attorney General of the U.S. A. Mitchell Palmer from Pennsylvania
 * Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo from California
 * Senator Robert Latham Owen of Oklahoma

Not placed in nomination

 * Former United States Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska
 * House Minority Leader Champ Clark of Missouri
 * President of the United States Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey

Favorite sons

 * U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Edwin T. Meredith of Iowa
 * Senator Carter Glass of Virginia
 * Governor Al Smith of New York
 * Senator Gilbert Hitchcock of Nebraska
 * Ambassador to the United Kingdom John W. Davis of West Virginia
 * Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi
 * Party Chairman Homer Stille Cummings of Connecticut
 * Senator Furnifold Simmons of North Carolina
 * Vice President Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana

Delegates not selected in primaries
Many delegations were not selected in public primaries. The following table shows delegates awarded at a state level by convention, committees, and other means.