Davis was a dark horse candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in both 1920 and 1924. His friend and partner Frank Polk managed his campaign at the 1924 Democratic National Convention. He won the nomination in 1924 as a compromise candidate on the one hundred and third ballot. Although Tennessee's Andrew Johnson served as President after Lincoln was assassinated, Davis' nomination made him the first presidential candidate from a former slave state since the Civil War, and as of 2020 he remains the only ever candidate from West Virginia. Davis' denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan and prior defense of black voting rights as Solicitor General under Wilson cost him votes in the South and among conservative Democrats elsewhere. He lost in a landslide to Calvin Coolidge, who did not leave the White House to campaign. Davis' 28.8 percent remains the smallest percentage of the popular vote ever won by a Democratic presidential nominee. He won every state of the former Confederacy and Oklahoma.