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The election of 1920 was the first one in which women throughout the United States had the right to vote.  In anticipation of this new opportunity, the editors of Triangle wondered whether or not women would vote independently from the male members of their households and whether or not women would take the time to study the candidates and their platforms and not be swayed by popular opinion.  On election day, a straw poll was held on campus.  Harding won overwhelmingly among both the faculty and the students.  For the next twenty years, this pattern was repeated.  Coolidge, Hoover, Landon and Willkie–Republicans all–won the vast majority of both student and faculty votes in every mock election at the school.  One father wrote to Eliza Kellas right after the election of 1928 that he was proud that his state, Colorado, had joined with New York State in putting Hoover in the White House.  He hastened to note that he would not have presumed to mention politics had she not said something to him in September that led him to believe she was a Hoover supporter.  (He was correct.  Eliza Kellas was an ardent Republican.)

Perhaps the closest brush to the presidency on campus came in January, 1918, when the ex-president, William Howard Taft, visited Troy.  He stayed with the Cluetts, whose estate bordered the campus.  Margaret Cluett, a third grader at Emma Willard, wrote about Taft’s visit to her house for Triangle.  What impressed her most was the girth of the man who holds the record as our heaviest president.  She commented, “Mr. Taft came to our house…and stayed overnight…He was a great big man and was very heavy.  He has a very jolly laugh.”

In 1940, four faculty members voted for the Socialist candidate, Norman Thomas.  There is no record of who they were or how they fared in the sea of Republicans that surrounded them.

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