In the presidential election, Republican President Calvin Coolidge (who took office on August 2, 1923, upon the death of his predecessor, Warren G. Harding) was elected to serve a full term, defeating Democratic nominee, former Ambassador John W. Davis and Progressive Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr. from Wisconsin. Coolidge easily won the election, taking almost every state outside the Solid South. Davis won the Democratic nomination after a record 103 ballots, emerging as a compromise candidate between Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo and New York Governor Al Smith. La Follette, a former Republican who had sought the 1912 Republican nomination, drew sixteen percent of the popular vote and won his home state of Wisconsin.