The 1924 Georgia gubernatorial election took place on November 4, 1924, in order to elect the

governor of Georgia The governor of Georgia is the head of government of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia and the commander-in-chief of the state's Georgia National Guard, National Guard, when not in federal service, and Georgia State Defense Force, State Defense Fo ...

. Incumbent Democratic governor Clifford Walker was unopposed in the Democratic primary. As was common at the time, the Democratic candidate ran unopposed in the general election so therefore the Democratic primary was the real contest, and winning the primary was considered

tantamount to election A safe seat is an electoral district which is regarded as fully secure, for either a certain political party, or the incumbent representative personally or a combination of both. With such seats, there is very little chance of a seat changing h ...

Democratic primary

The Democratic

primary election Primary elections or primaries are elections held to determine which candidates will run in an upcoming general election. In a partisan primary, a political party selects a candidate. Depending on the state and/or party, there may be an "open pr ...

was held on September 10, 1924. As Walker was unopposed, there was no run-off.

County unit system

From 1917 until 1962, the Democratic Party in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

used a voting system called the

county unit system The county unit system was a voting system used by the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to determine a victor in statewide primary elections, as well as some Congressional elections, from 1917 until 1962. History Though the county unit ...

to determine victors in statewide primary elections. The system was ostensibly designed to function similarly to the

Electoral College An electoral college is a body whose task is to elect a candidate to a particular office. It is mostly used in the political context for a constitutional body that appoints the head of state or government, and sometimes the upper parliament ...

, but in practice the large ratio of unit votes for small, rural counties to unit votes for more populous urban areas provided outsized political influence to the smaller counties. Under the county unit system, the 159 counties in Georgia were divided by population into three categories. The largest eight counties were classified as "Urban", the next-largest 30 counties were classified as "Town", and the remaining 121 counties were classified as "Rural". Urban counties were given 6 unit votes, Town counties were given 4 unit votes, and Rural counties were given 2 unit votes, for a total of 410 available unit votes. Each county's unit votes were awarded on a winner-take-all basis. Candidates were required to obtain a

majority A majority is more than half of a total; however, the term is commonly used with other meanings, as explained in the "#Related terms, Related terms" section below. It is a subset of a Set (mathematics), set consisting of more than half of the se ...

of unit votes (not necessarily a majority of the popular vote), or 206 total unit votes, to win the election. If no candidate received a majority in the initial primary, a

runoff election The two-round system (TRS or 2RS), sometimes called ballotage, top-two runoff, or two-round plurality, is a single-winner electoral system which aims to elect a member who has support of the majority of voters. The two-round system involves one ...

was held between the top two candidates to determine a winner.

Candidates

* Clifford Walker, incumbent

governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...

Results

General election

In the general election, Walker ran unopposed.

Results

References

Bibliography

* * * * {{1924 United States elections

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20–January 30, 30 – Kuomintang in Ch ...

Gubernatorial A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the type of political region or polity, a ''governor'' ma ...

November 1924 in the United States Single-candidate elections