Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 1928. In a landslide victory, the Republican ticket of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and Senator Charles Curtis defeated the Democratic ticket of New York Governor Al Smith and Senator Joseph T. Robinson.
After President Calvin Coolidge declined to seek reelection, Hoover emerged as the Republican Party's frontrunner. As Hoover's party opponents failed to unite around a candidate, Hoover received a large majority of the vote at the 1928 Republican National Convention. The strong state of the economy discouraged some Democrats from running, and Smith was nominated on the first ballot of the 1928 Democratic National Convention. Hoover and Smith had been widely known as potential presidential candidates long before the 1928 campaign, and both were generally regarded as outstanding leaders. Both were newcomers to the presidential race and presented in their person and record an appeal of unknown potency to the electorate. Both faced serious discontent within their respective parties' membership, and both lacked the wholehearted support of their parties' organization.
In the end, the Republicans were identified with the booming economy of the 1920s, and Smith, a Roman Catholic, suffered politically from anti-Catholic sentiment particularly in the Solid South, his opposition to Prohibition, and his association with the legacy of corruption by Tammany Hall. Hoover won a third straight Republican landslide and made substantial inroads in the traditionally-Democratic Solid South by winning several states that had not voted for a Republican since the end of Reconstruction. Smith carried the five states of the Deep South, his running mate's home state of Arkansas, and the Northeastern states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Hoover's victory made him the first president born west of the Mississippi River, and he remains the most recent incumbent Cabinet secretary to win a presidential election. Charles Curtis became the first (and thus far the only) Native American vice president, and the first vice president with acknowledged non-European ancestry. This was the last Republican presidential victory until 1952. As of 2024, this is the most recent presidential election in which the winning ticket was the same party as the incumbent without being the incumbent President or Vice President; the most recent election won by the Republican Party without Richard Nixon, Donald Trump, or a member of the Bush family on the ticket; and the most recent presidential election in which the incumbent president did not seek reelection despite being eligible for another term.
Nominations
Republican Party nomination
Other candidates
With President Calvin Coolidge choosing not to seek re-election, the race for the nomination was wide open. The leading candidates were Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, former Illinois Governor Frank Orren Lowden and Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis. A movement to draft Coolidge failed to gain traction with party insiders or even persuade Coolidge himself.
In the few primaries that mattered, Hoover did not perform as well as expected, leaving him with fewer than half the number of pledged delegates that he needed to win the nomination. Lowden in turn only had half the number of delegates that Hoover did, leaving it looking unlikely that the first rounds of voting would produce a majority for any candidate. Attempts were made to sound out Coolidge and Vice President Charles G. Dawes as to whether they would be willing to enter the race and break a potential deadlock between Hoover and Lowden, but both Coolidge and Dawes remained aloof. The matter was unexpectedly resolved when the convention voted to adopt a platform that repudiated the McNary–Haugen Farm Relief Bill, in turn causing Lowden to withdraw his candidacy in protest, and leaving no obvious challenger to Hoover. The only real competition that remained came from Senator Curtis, whose campaign was left with far too little time to win over the Lowden supporters.
The Republican Convention was held in Kansas City, Missouri from June 12 to 15 and nominated Hoover on the first ballot. With Hoover disinclined to interfere in the selection of his running mate, the party leaders were at first partial to giving Dawes a shot at a second term, but when that information leaked, Coolidge sent an angry telegram that said that he would consider a second nomination for Dawes, whom he hated, a "personal affront". To attract votes from farmers who were concerned about Hoover's pro-business orientation, the nomination was instead offered to Curtis. He accepted and was nominated overwhelmingly on the first ballot. Curtis was the first candidate of Native American ancestry nominated by a major party for national office.
In his memoirs, Hoover details his response upon hearing he was nominated:
My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay. It conferred upon me the mission to administer America’s response to the appeal of afflicted nations during the war. It has called me into the cabinets of two Presidents. By these experiences I have observed the burdens and responsibilities of the greatest office in the world. That office touches the happiness of every home. It deals with the peace of nations. No man could think of it except in terms of solemn consecration.
In a later more broadly circulated speech eight weeks after the convention ended, Hoover said: "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of this land... We shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this land." That sentence would haunt Hoover during the Great Depression.
Democratic Party nomination
Other candidates
Owing to the economic prosperity in the country and rapidly fading public memory of the Teapot Dome scandal, the Democratic Party's prospects looked dim. New York Governor Al Smith had previously made two attempts to secure the Democratic nomination.
The 1928 Democratic National Convention was held in Houston, Texas, on June 26 to 28, and Smith became the candidate on the first ballot.
The leadership asked the delegates to nominate Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, in many ways Smith's political polar opposite, to be his running mate, and Robinson was nominated for vice-president.
Smith was the first Roman Catholic to gain a major party's nomination for president, and his religion became an issue during the campaign. Many Protestants feared that Smith would take orders from church leaders in the Vatican in making decisions affecting the country.
Other candidates
Held in the Finnish Socialist Hall in New York City, the eighth Socialist Party Convention met on April 13. James Maurer, a former State Representative, President of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor and then Councilman for the city of Reading, was widely considered the frontrunner in the months before the convention met. For his boomers however, Maurer stood that his duties as councilman precluded the possibility of any national tour that would be required of his nomination for the presidency, and this declination was made definitive on the tenth of April. Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister who had been one of Maurer's boomers and had himself made it known that he was not a candidate for the Socialist nomination rather swiftly became the new frontrunner, and plans were made for a draft effort. Thomas and Maurer were nominated unanimously for president and vice president respectively, with both men accepting their nominations.
Workers (Communist) Party
Held in the Mecca Temple in New York City, the second Workers Party Convention met on the twenty-fifth of May. Jay Lovestone served as the convention's keynote speaker, denouncing the Democratic, Republican and Socialist Parties and claiming that the Communists would turn the next "imperialist war" into a civil war. Party Chair William Foster was named as the party's candidate for the presidency while Benjamin Gitlow, a former opponent of Foster's within the party, was named as its candidate for vice president. Scott Nearing was also considered a possible contender for either position on ticket. A platform was adopted which, in addition to calling for American workers to overthrow the capitalistic system of government, also demanded the enactment of social insurance, the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, a five-hour workday, the withdrawal of troops from Nicaragua and China, and the recognition of the Soviet Union.
Held in New York City, the tenth Socialist Labor Party Convention met on the twelfth of May. Initially the ticket was a duplicate of the one nominated four years prior, Frank Johns of Oregon for the presidency and Verne Reynolds of Michigan for Vice President; however Johns, while campaigning in Bend, Oregon, died while attempting to rescue a young boy who had fallen into the river shortly after one of his opening campaign events. With their standard-bearer having passed, the executive committee of the party tendered the presidential nomination to Reynolds, with the place of vice presidential nominee being filled by Jeremiah Crowley of New York. Speaking of the "decay of the Capitalistic System", Reynolds campaigned on the idea of Industrial democracy.
Prohibition Party
Held at the La Salle Hotel in Chicago, the fifteenth Prohibition Party Convention met on the tenth of July. Dr. D. Leigh Colvin and other Prohibitionists had found both the Republican and Democratic planks regarding Prohibition as unsatisfactory, and there was open discussion of nominating a ticket despite the continued reversals the party had suffered since 1920. The name of former Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania was bandied about as a potential contender, though there were those like Colvin who wanted to take advantage of the Democrat's nomination of a Wet Catholic by nominating a Dry Southern Democrat to the head of the ticket in the hopes of carrying one of the Southern states; William Gibbs McAdoo, Senator Robert Owen of Oklahoma, and former IRS Commissioner Daniel Roper were other names considered for a draft. A merger with the Farmer-Labor Party was contemplated for a time, and a committee was appointed which named a potential ticket of Gifford Pinchot for President and former Governor William Ellery Sweet of Colorado for Vice President; however neither man responded to inquiries whether they would accept the nomination, and eventually both the Prohibition and Farmer-Labor Parties tabled motions calling for fusion.
There remained immense pressure within the party to name Herbert Hoover as their choice for president despite his dithering on the issue of Prohibition enforcement in the eyes of the stricter Drys, and indeed when the balloting for the presidential nomination commenced Hoover was found to be the second most popular choice of the delegates. Those opposed to Hoover rallied on the second ballot however behind frontrunner William F. Varney, an insurance salesman and party regular from New York. James Edgerton, a Virginian native who had headed the Jefferson-Lincoln League in the failed effort to fuse the Prohibition and Farmer-Labor Parties, was nominated for the vice presidency. An olive branch was still offered to Hoover however, with the Prohibition Party promising to withdraw their ticket and endorse his candidacy were he make a public declaration in favor of Prohibition, that they would uphold the Volstead Act, and that they would present legislation to better enforce both during their term as president. Indeed, there remained a concerted effort to withdraw the ticket from the race, resulting in a meeting by the Party National Executive Committee on whether Varney should drop out. Varney himself was opposed to this plan, and in a narrow vote, four to three, the effort to effectively endorse Hoover for the presidency failed. Still, there remained a concern that the ticket might potentially spoil the race and accidentally result in Smith's election to the presidency, and so care was taken to avoid any repeat of 1884; Prohibition Party electors were not filed in New York, and Varney and Edgerton were to confine their campaigning to the Solid South and the Border States, reasoning that many Dry Democrats there might still vote for Smith unless they were given a third option.
Farmer-Labor Party
Held in Chicago, the third Farmer-Labor Party Convention met on the tenth of July. A merger with the Prohibition Party was contemplated for a time, and a committee was appointed which named a potential ticket of Gifford Pinchot for president and former Governor William Ellery Sweet of Colorado for Vice President; however neither man responded to inquiries whether they would accept the nomination, and eventually both the Farmer-Labor and Prohibition Parties tabled motions calling for fusion. Initially the party had nominated Senator George Norris of Nebraska for President, but Norris adhered to an earlier declaration that he had made where he felt that the political machinery necessary to wage a successful campaign for the presidency was not possible to establish so late in the campaigning season. To run alongside Norris the party had named William J. Vereen of Georgia, a cotton textile manufacturer, but refused to consider his nomination under any circumstances once the press had brought it to his attention. Some months later the presidential nomination was tendered to Colonel Frank Elbridge Webb of California, with the vice presidential nomination being offered to Senator James Reed of Missouri after Webb rejected the idea of potentially running with Senator James Heflin of Alabama; as with Vereen, Reed had no prior knowledge of his impending nomination and wholly rejected it, purportedly saying "Who in hell is Webb?". A third man, Dr. Henry Alexander of North Carolina was then nominated in Reed's stead, but on September 18 Alexander requested that his name be withdrawn from the ticket and he later endorsed Al Smith for the presidency. At some point after LeRoy Tillman, a nephew of the late Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina, was nominated in Alexander's stead.