1940 United States presidential election
The 1940 United States presidential election was the 39th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 5, 1940. Incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican businessman Wendell Willkie to be reelected for an unprecedented third term in office. Until 1988, this was the last time in which the incumbent's party won three consecutive presidential elections. It was also the fourth presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1860, 1904, 1920, 1944, and 2016.
531 members of the Electoral College
266 electoral votes needed to win
The election was contested in the shadow of World War II in Europe, as the United States was finally emerging from the Great Depression. Roosevelt did not want to campaign for a third term initially, but was driven by worsening conditions in Europe.[3] He and his allies sought to defuse challenges from other party leaders such as James Farley and Vice President John Nance Garner. The 1940 Democratic National Convention re-nominated Roosevelt on the first ballot, while Garner was replaced on the ticket by Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace. Willkie, a dark horse candidate, defeated conservative Senator Robert A. Taft and prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey on the sixth presidential ballot of the 1940 Republican National Convention.
Roosevelt, acutely aware of strong isolationist and non-interventionist sentiment, promised there would be no involvement in foreign wars if he were re-elected.[4] Willkie, who had not previously run for public office, conducted an energetic campaign, managing to revive Republican strength in areas of the Midwest and Northeast. He criticized perceived incompetence and waste in the New Deal, warned of the dangers of breaking the two-term tradition, and accused Roosevelt of secretly planning to take the country into World War II. However, Willkie's association with big business damaged his cause, as many working class voters blamed corporations and business leaders for the Great Depression. Roosevelt led in all pre-election polls and won a comfortable victory; his margins, though still significant, were less decisive than they had been in 1932 and 1936.
Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote
Foreign interference[edit]
The British government engaged covert intelligence operations to support Roosevelt, including the planting of false news stories, wiretaps, "October surprises", and other intelligence activities.[26][27] The German government had allocated $5 million as a campaign war chest via the German embassy to bribe Democratic delegates at the 1940 convention, using American businessman William Rhodes Davis as a conduit. Davis was sympathetic to the German cause after his meeting with Hermann Göring and was enlisted for this purpose. Later, he directed some of these funds towards supporting anti-Roosevelt radio broadcasts by the isolationist labor leader John L. Lewis, with the aim of impeding Roosevelt's re-election bid. Initially a supporter of Roosevelt in 1936, Davis had become disillusioned by 1940, and the two had grown apart over foreign policy. The German envoy in Mexico had also requested $160,000 to sway an unnamed Democratic Party operative in Pennsylvania to unseat interventionist Democratic Senator Joseph Guffey, who was a prominent critic of Nazi Germany. Davis was later identified as Abwehr agent C-80 following his death in August 1941.[18][28]
External videos , C-SPAN
