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1932 United States presidential election

The 1932 United States presidential election was the 37th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1932. The election took place against the backdrop of the Great Depression. The incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover was defeated in a landslide by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York and the vice presidential nominee of the 1920 presidential election. Roosevelt was the first Democrat in 80 years to simultaneously win an outright majority of the electoral college and popular vote, a feat last accomplished by Franklin Pierce in 1852, as well as the first Democrat in 56 years to win a majority of the popular vote, which was last done by Samuel J. Tilden in 1876. Roosevelt was the last sitting governor to be elected president until Bill Clinton in 1992. Hoover became the first incumbent president to lose an election to another term since William Howard Taft in 1912, and the last to do so until Gerald Ford lost 44 years later. The election marked the effective end of the Fourth Party System, which had been dominated by Republicans. It was the first time since 1916 that a Democrat was elected president.


531 members of the Electoral College
266 electoral votes needed to win

56.8%[1] Decrease 0.1 pp

Despite disastrous economic conditions due to the Great Depression, Hoover faced little opposition at the 1932 Republican National Convention. Roosevelt was widely considered the front-runner at the start of the 1932 Democratic National Convention, but was not able to clinch the nomination until the fourth ballot of the convention. The Democratic convention chose a leading Southern Democrat, Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas, as the party's vice presidential nominee. Roosevelt united the party, campaigning on the failures of the Hoover administration. He promised recovery with a "New Deal" for the American people.


Roosevelt won by a landslide in both the electoral and popular votes, carrying every state outside of the Northeast and receiving the highest percentage of the popular vote of any Democratic nominee up to that time. Hoover had won over 58% of the popular vote in the 1928 presidential election, but his share of the popular vote declined to 39.6% in 1932. Socialist Party nominee Norman Thomas won 2.2% of the popular vote. Subsequent Democratic landslides in the 1934 mid-term elections and the 1936 presidential election confirmed the commencement of the Fifth Party System, which was dominated by Roosevelt's New Deal Coalition.[2] Roosevelt's election ended the era of Republican dominance in presidential politics that had lasted since the beginning of the Civil War and the election of 1860.

Background[edit]

Republican nominee Herbert Hoover had won in the 1928 presidential election against Democratic nominee Al Smith. Smith had lost the support of the Solid South during the campaign likely due to anti-Catholic sentiment. Hoover had won in a landslide with him winning forty of the forty-eight states giving him 444 electoral votes against Smith's 87. However, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression weakened the power of the Republicans. In the 1930 elections, the Democrats gained control of the United States House of Representatives, reduced the Republican majority in the United States Senate to one, and won a majority of the governorships.[3]


Smith was the first Democratic nominee in the 20th century to win a majority of the twelve largest cities in the country. The net vote totals in the twelve largest cities shifted from Republican to Democratic with Harding having won 1,540,000 in 1920, Coolidge by 1,308,000 in 1924, while Smith won by 210,000. Samuel Lubell wrote in The Future of American Politics that Franklin D. Roosevelt's victory in the 1932 election was preceded by Smith's increased vote totals in urban areas.[4]

governor of New York

Franklin D. Roosevelt

(campaign), former governor of New York and 1928 Democratic presidential nominee

Al Smith

U.S. Speaker of the House, of Texas

John Nance Garner

governor of Oklahoma

William H. Murray

Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

1932 United States Senate elections

1932 United States House of Representatives elections

History of the United States (1918–1945)

Timeline of the Great Depression

Causes of the Great Depression

Great Contraction

First inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt

. The Creation of a Democratic Majority: 1928–1936 (1979), statistical study of voting patterns

Andersen, Kristi

Burns, James Macgregor. Roosevelt the Lion and the Fox (1956) pp 123–52.

online

Carcasson, Martin. "Herbert Hoover and the presidential campaign of 1932: The failure of apologia." Presidential Studies Quarterly 28.2 (1998): 349–365.

in JSTOR

Eden, Robert (1993). "On the Origins of the Regime of Pragmatic Liberalism: John Dewey, Adolf A. Berle, and FDR's Commonwealth Club Address of 1932". Studies in American Political Development. 7: 74–150. :10.1017/S0898588X00000699.

doi

Freidel, Frank Franklin D. Roosevelt The Triumph (1956) covers 1929–32 in depth

online

Freidel, Frank. "Election of 1932", in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., The Coming to Power: Critical Presidential Elections in American History (1981)

Champion Campaigner: Franklin D. Roosevelt (1952)

Gosnell, Harold F.

Gosnell, Harold F.; Gill, Norman N. (1935). "An Analysis of the 1932 Presidential Vote in Chicago". American Political Science Review. 29 (6): 967–984. :10.2307/1947313. JSTOR 1947313.

doi

Houck, Davis W. (2004). "FDR's Commonwealth Club Address: Redefining Individualism, Adjudicating Greatness". Rhetoric & Public Affairs. 7 (3): 259–282. :10.1353/rap.2005.0006. S2CID 144548607.

doi

Hoover, Herbert. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Great Depression, 1929–1941 (1952)

Nicolaides, Becky M. (1988). "Radio electioneering in the American presidential campaigns of 1932 and 1936". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 8 (2): 115–138. :10.1080/01439688800260171.

doi

O'Mara, Margaret (2015). Pivotal Tuesdays. :10.9783/9780812291711. ISBN 9780812291711.

doi

Peel, Roy V.; Donnelly, Thomas C. (1936). "The 1932 Campaign: An Analysis". Journal of Educational Sociology. 9 (8): 510. :10.2307/2262331. JSTOR 2262331.

doi

1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR: Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal and Unlikely Destiny (2015)

Pietrusza, David

Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932 (2007)

Ritchie, Donald A.

Ritchie, Donald A. (2011). "The Election of 1932". A Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt. pp. 77–95. :10.1002/9781444395181.ch5. ISBN 9781444395181.

doi

Robinson, Edgar Eugene. The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932 (Stanford university press, 1940) voting returns for every county

The Crisis of the Old Order (1957), pp 427–54 online

Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M.

1932 popular vote by counties