A presidential election was held in the United States on November 8, 1932. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Republican ticket of President Herbert Hoover and Vice President Charles Curtis were defeated, in a landslide, by the Democratic ticket of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York, and John Nance Garner, the speaker of the House. This realigning election marked the effective end of the Fourth Party System, which had been dominated by Republicans, and the beginning of an era of Democratic dominance under the New Deal coalition.
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 college and popular vote, 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 evaporated to just 39.6% in 1932; he failed to win any state south of Delaware or west of Pennsylvania. Socialist Party nominee Norman Thomas won 2.2% of the popular vote. Subsequent Democratic landslides in the 1934 midterm elections and the 1936 presidential election confirmed the commencement of the Fifth Party System, which was largely dominated by Roosevelt's Democratic New Deal Coalition.
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 and began 20 years of presidential control for the Democratic Party and 20 years in opposition for the Republican Party; the two decades of uninterrupted Democratic control of the presidency remains the longest such streak by a single party in American history (the Republican Party won more consecutive elections from the aforementioned 1860 election to 1880, but their tenure in the White House was interrupted by the ascendency of Democrat Andrew Johnson to the presidency). Republicans would not reclaim the White House until 1952.
Roosevelt was the first Democrat to be elected president since 1916, the first to win an outright majority of the popular vote since 1876, and the first to win a majority of both the electoral and popular vote since 1852. Hoover was the only incumbent president to lose an election between 1912 and 1976, and the only elected incumbent to do so between 1912 and 1980.
Background
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.
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.
Nominations
Democratic Party nomination
Democratic candidates:
- John Nance Garner, U.S. Speaker of the House, of Texas
- William H. Murray, governor of Oklahoma
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, governor of New York
- Al Smith (campaign), former governor of New York and 1928 Democratic presidential nominee
Smith, who announced his candidacy on February 6, 1932, was a leading candidate as he had remained active in the party and retained his support from the 1928 campaign. Joseph Taylor Robinson, who had been Smith's vice-presidential running mate, announced that he would not be a candidate on March 31, 1932, and gave his support to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Jesse I. Straus conducted a poll of the delegates to the 1928 Democratic National Convention which showed that the majority supported Roosevelt, and additional polling showed Roosevelt winning in the primary and general election. Representative Edgar Howard stated that "Nine out of ten men in nine out of ten states are for Roosevelt, and he will be the Democratic choice." Roosevelt announced his campaign on January 23, 1932.
William H. Murray ran in multiple primaries and won one delegate in the North Dakota primary, but failed to win in the Florida, Nebraska, Oregon, and West Virginia primaries. He won in the Ohio primary as he was the only candidate on the ballot, but the delegates were instructed by the convention and not the primary. The Oklahoma convention selected to give him control of its twenty-two member delegation.
Newton D. Baker declined to run in the primaries, and instead planned on serving as a compromise candidate if neither Smith nor Roosevelt could win the nomination at the convention balloting. J. Hamilton Lewis won the presidential primary in Illinois on April 12, 1932, and the state's fifty-eight member delegation was instructed to vote for him, but he withdrew before the convention on June 25. The majority of the Illinois delegation supported Melvin Alvah Traylor for the first three ballots before giving their support to Roosevelt on the fourth ballot. Tom Pendergast, a political boss in Missouri, had the state's delegation instructed to vote for James A. Reed, who had run for the nomination in the 1928 election, and the delegation supported Reed for the first three ballots before switching to Roosevelt. Harry F. Byrd and George White were favorite son candidates from their states. A. Harry Moore was a favorite son candidate supported by Lewis, but the delegation of his home state New Jersey voted for Smith.
Both Smith and Roosevelt were against Prohibition, but Smith supported making it a main issue during the campaign while Roosevelt did not. John J. Raskob, who had become the chair of the Democratic National Committee with Smith's support, attempted to have the committee make a statement against prohibition in March 1931, and Smith gave a speech in support of it. James Farley, the chair of the New York State Democratic Committee and later Roosevelt's presidential campaign manager, had the New York committee pass a resolution opposing declarations before the national convention was held. Other state parties supported this resolution causing the vote to not happen. Raskob proposed the declaration again on January 9, 1932, but had the committee not take action on it.
Tammany Hall and Roosevelt had a truce during his governorship, but the organization came to openly oppose him for his role in Mayor Jimmy Walker's resignation. Tammany Hall supported Smith for the nomination at the convention causing Roosevelt to refuse to support their mayoral candidate in the 1933 election and to support Fiorello La Guardia in the 1937 election. Tammany Hall's power was also reduced by the adoption of proportional representation for the New York City Council. Roosevelt also gave support to the American Labor Party in order for Democratic voters to support the New Deal without giving support to Tammany Hall candidates. Representative John J. O'Connor, who represented one of the districts with the strongest Tammany influence and was the chair of the House Rules Committee, lost renomination in the Democratic primary and in the general election with the Republican nomination in the 1938 election.
Smith's strategy against Roosevelt was to use favorite son candidates to control the delegations of their states in places that would have otherwise gone for Roosevelt. The majority of Smith's support came from the northeast while Roosevelt's support came from the south and west. Wilbur Lucius Cross, Joseph B. Ely, Frank Hague, J. Howard McGrath, Moore, Raskob, and Jouett Shouse were among Smith's campaign leaders. Roosevelt attempted to have some of the favorite son candidates withdraw using Homer Stille Cummings as a mediator, but he was unsuccessful.
Seventeen states used primaries to select their delegates to the national conventions while the rest used a convention system. Roosevelt controlled the delegations from thirty states and additional delegations from Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, and South Carolina had supporters of Roosevelt, but were uninstructed. Roosevelt was endorsed at the state convention in Mississippi, but the delegates were left uninstructed. Roosevelt also claimed that he had the support of the twenty-eight delegates from all of the territories. Smith controlled the delegates from four states. The remaining delegations were either uninstructed or under the control of favorite sons. Roosevelt failed to gain control of two-thirds of the delegates which was required for him to gain the nomination.
The convention was held in Chicago between June 27 and July 2. The first vote was taken at 4:28 on the morning of July 2, after ten hours of speeches that had begun at 5:00 on the previous afternoon. The Roosevelt delegations from Louisiana and Minnesota were seated giving Roosevelt an additional thirty-two votes. Thomas J. Walsh, an ally of Roosevelt, was elected to chair the convention against Shouse by a vote of 626 to 528. Roosevelt received the most votes on the first three ballots, but he still did not have a two-thirds majority.
John Nance Garner, who had the support of William Randolph Hearst, won in the California primary due to the support of the Texas State Society of California which had 100,000 members. Garner had the support of ninety delegates at the convention and Hearst created a compromise with Roosevelt. Roosevelt, who needed the support of the Californian and Texan delegations to gain a two-thirds majority, would receive the support of Garner's delegates in exchange for Garner being given the vice-presidential nomination. With this agreement, Garner's supporters in California and Texas were released by Sam Rayburn, Garner's campaign manager, and voted for Roosevelt on the fourth ballot, giving him the presidential nomination. Members of the Texas delegation who opposed Roosevelt were led by Amon G. Carter, but the Roosevelt supporters led by Thomas Whitfield Davidson won by a vote of 54 to 51. Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island were the only states whose delegations did not support Roosevelt on the final ballot. Garner won the vice-presidential nomination on the first ballot against Matthew A. Tinley and his nomination was made unanimous.
Republican Party nomination
Republican candidates:
- Calvin Coolidge, former president of the United States (declined)
- Herbert Hoover, president of the United States
- Joseph I. France, former senator from Maryland
- Dwight Morrow, senator from New Jersey (died)
In November 1931, Senator Hiram Johnson called for Hoover to retire as it would increase the chances of the Republicans winning in the 1932 election. Hoover's opponents in the Republican Party supported giving either former President Calvin Coolidge or Senator Dwight Morrow the party's presidential nomination. Morrow had been elected to the U.S. Senate from New Jersey in 1930, but died on October 5, 1931. On July 31, 1931, an article by James F. Coupal, Coolidge's former White House physician, was published by the St. Paul Dispatch in which Coupal stated that Coolidge would run "if the people of this country evince an unmistakable and unquestionable desire to draft him to pull the country out of this period of depression, and if he can have the presidency without any political or other obligations attached to it". Coolidge did not run for the nomination and an article written by him was published by The Saturday Evening Post on October 3, 1932, in which he gave his support to Hoover and was critical of those who had wanted him to run.
Charles G. Dawes was suggested as a candidate following Morrow's death and the unsuccessful attempt to draft Coolidge, but his selection as president of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation took him out of consideration. Progressive Republicans considered forming a third party, but William Borah, Johnson, George W. Norris, and Gifford Pinchot declined to lead such a movement. An attempt to have progressive leaders in multiple states run against Hoover failed and Borah stated that Hoover could not be defeated.
Hoover formally started his campaign by having Robert H. Lucas, executive director of the Republican National Committee, send out letters to precinct leaders in January 1931. Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown and Treasury Secretary Ogden L. Mills helped manage Hoover's campaign. Theodore Joslin started a publicity campaign to improve Hoover's image.
Joseph I. France, a member of the conservative faction, ran against Hoover in the primary, but only won in states where he was unopposed. These states also had no delegates bounded to their primaries leading to them sending pro-Hoover delegations. At the national convention Lawritz Bernhard Sandblast, a delegate from Oregon, nominated France, but France attempted to address the convention to withdraw his candidacy and instead nominate Coolidge. Hoover had him removed citing that he could not address the convention as he was not a delegate. Hoover, who was nominated by Joseph Scott, won renomination on the first ballot while France only received four delegates.
Dawes was proposed as a replacement for Vice President Charles Curtis, who faced opposition due to his age and prohibitionist stances, and delegations from over twenty states opposed the renomination of Curtis. However, Dawes declined to seek the vice-presidential nomination. Curtis, Alvan T. Fuller, James Harbord, Hanford MacNider, J. Leonard Replogle, and Bertrand Snell were nominated for the vice-presidential balloting. Curtis initially fell 19.25 votes short of winning on the first ballot, but the Pennsylvania delegation changed its support to Curtis causing him to win.