He won the presidency in his first-ever election campaign

Hoover briefly ran for president in 1920, although he never gave his express consent or took part in the campaign. Hoover, who was essentially nonpartisan, ran for office in California primarily on the topic of joining the League of Nations, which his fellow Progressive Republican rival Hiram Johnson passionately opposed. Hoover dropped out of the campaign when Johnson won the California primary. After serving as Harding's secretary of commerce for seven years, Hoover decided to run for president once more.

Although Hoover once said "the whole idea" of a political campaign filled him "with complete revulsion," his national popularity peaked after he oversaw relief efforts after flooding along the Mississippi River in 1927. As a result, when Coolidge announced he wouldn't run for reelection, Hoover emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Hoover had won enough primaries by the time of the Republican convention in Kansas City in the summer of 1928, despite the party leadership's lack of complete confidence in him, to win the support of several constituencies and the crucial endorsement of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. With 444 electoral votes to Alfred E. Smith's 87 and 58 percent of the popular vote, he handily beat Smith in the general election.