Presidential election in the United States, 1932

‹  1928  •   •  1936 ›
37th presidential election
November 8, 1932
			Democratic Party
			Franklin D. Roosevelt / John Nance Garner
			electors					472
			be right				22,821,277
									57.4%
			Republican Party
			Herbert Hoover / Charles Curtis
			electors					59
			be right				15,761,254
									39.7%
Election results by state
42 states   Roosevelt / Garner						6 states   Hoover / Curtis
President of the United States
Before the election Herbert Hoover Republican Party						Elected Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic Party

The United States presidential election in 1932 of 8 November 1932 took place when the impact of the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression were present throughout the country. All over the world, governments felt pressure to give in to radical solutions - even socialist and fascist - in order to overcome the economic crisis. Against this background, approval for the politics and person of President Herbert Hoover fell .

He was challenged by the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt , who won the election clearly and thus initiated a change of policy. In Congress , too, the Democrats were able to secure clear majorities in both chambers.

Candidates

republican

Republican candidates:

• 

  President Herbert Hoover

• 

  Senator John J. Blaine

• 

  Former Senator Joseph I. France

• 

  Former Senator James Wolcott Wadsworth

Early in the year, Republicans hoped the Depression had bottomed out and therefore believed that President Hoover was the most likely to win the election. Former Senator Joseph Irwin France was Hoover's opponent in the primaries and often won there - but Hoover only got in at a later point in time, so France had no opponent. Therefore, his victories in the primaries are also tarnished by the following facts: First, Hoover succeeded in defeating France in his home state of Maryland , and second, only a few delegates were actually elected to the party congress in the primaries. The majority of the delegates were determined by the local party executive committee.

Hoover's party congress managers were strict directors and did not allow negative comments about the course of the country. Hoover was elected with 98% of the vote in the first ballot. Both the more rural Republicans and the more economical ones tried to prevent the re-nomination of Vice President Charles Curtis , who was only elected with 55%.

Democrats

Democratic candidates:

• 

  New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt

• 

  Former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith

• 

  House Speaker John Nance Garner

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago , Franklin D. Roosevelt won his party's nomination in the fourth ballot. He triumphed over John Nance Garner , House Speaker and candidate of the 1928 election, Al Smith . Roosevelt made Garner a candidate for the vice presidency in return . With the nomination of the Texan Garner, the conservative wing of the party from the south should also be pacified after Roosevelt, a left-wing liberal candidate, was sent into the race. The Democrats advocated lifting prohibition and advocated that individual states should legislate.

After his nomination, Roosevelt broke with tradition by personally accepting it at the party convention. In his speech he spoke of his goal of initiating a comprehensive reform process.

As a campaign song , Roosevelt used the song Happy Days Are Here Again in his election campaign , which has since been considered the unofficial party anthem of the Democrats.

More candidates

Norman Thomas ran for the socialists , the Communist Party nominated William Z. Foster , William D. Upshaw entered the ring for the Prohibitionists, William Harvey for the Liberty Party and Verne Reynolds for the Socialist Labor Party. All of these candidates combined got less than 3% of the vote.

Election campaign

Hoover in the 1932 election campaign

The main theme of the election campaign was the Great Depression . During the worsening Great Depression, the greatest national crisis since the American Civil War, Hoover did not express any public emotion about the increasing impoverishment. He was accused of pitilessness and harshness, among other things, so it was said that he only granted poor people the right to "die on their own two feet" while securing better and greater opportunities for the rich to "take over the world". The left-liberal magazine The Nation accused him of "cold-blooded murder". Though Hoover eventually moved to state-funded aid and infrastructure programs at unprecedented levels in the final year of his presidency, he resigned as the least popular president since Rutherford B. Hayes 52 years earlier. The measures he took came too late to be effective. During his presidency, every fourth farmer lost his land to his creditors and 5,000 banks collapsed, while an average of 100,000 jobs disappeared every week. In 1932, with twelve million unemployed, almost one in four Americans was unemployed. Without a functioning unemployment insurance, most of them were left with nothing and lived a miserable existence, often in the Hoovervilles named after the president , which remained a symbol of the global economic crisis for decades.

Roosevelt gave the Republicans to blame for the economic crisis, the policy of deregulation of Wall Street to the stock market crash on Black Thursday had led and the impoverishment of large parts of society. He also called for the prohibition that had existed since 1919 , the ban on the sale of alcohol , to be lifted . Politicians within the Republican Party also spoke out in favor of an end to the ban. This, according to Roosevelt, would also generate new and much-needed tax revenue. In any case, prohibition was extremely unpopular among the US population.

Result

Results by county: Blue counties were won by Roosevelt, red counties were won by Hoover. The stronger the color, the greater the lead in votes

The election took place on November 8, 1932. Roosevelt won with 57.4% of the vote, well ahead of Hoover, for whom 39.7% of the voters had voted. Out of 48 states at the time, Roosevelt received a majority of votes in 42. In doing so, he secured 472  electors , while his opponents accounted for 59 electors from six states. In total, Roosevelt received 22.8 million votes, more than any other candidate before, although his percentage of the vote was slightly below that of Warren G. Harding in 1920 and Herbert Hoover in 1928 (a record Roosevelt broke when he was re-elected four years later). Roosevelt's 472 votes in Electoral College also set a record in absolute terms after Hoover received 444 votes in 1928, more than anyone else. Roosevelt broke this record again in 1936 (523 electors).

It was the first time since 1876 that a Democratic candidate received an absolute majority of the votes and the first election victory since 1852 with an absolute majority. Samuel J. Tilden was defeated in 1876 despite an absolute majority in the Electoral College. All other electoral successes of the Democrats since 1852 came only through a relative majority .

candidate	Political party	be right		electors
		number	percent
Franklin D. Roosevelt	democrat	22,821,277	57.4%	472
Herbert Hoover	republican	15,761,254	39.7%	59
Norman Thomas	socialist	884.885	2.2%	0
William Z. Foster	Communist	103,307	0.3%	0
William D. Upshaw	Prohibitionist	81.905	0.2%	0
William Hope Harvey	Liberty Party	53,425	0.1%	0
Verne L. Reynolds	Socialist Labor Party	33,276	0.1%	0
total		39,739,329	100%	531

266 votes were necessary for the election to the president.

literature

• Donald Richard Deskins, Hanes Walton, Sherman C. Puckett: Presidential Elections, 1789-2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2010, ISBN 978-0-472-11697-3 , pp. 347-356 (= Chapter 39: Franklin D. Roosevelt's Initial Election. ).

Web links

Commons : 1932 US Presidential Election  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

1. ^ William E. Leuchtenburg : Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. 1932-1940. Harper & Row, New York NY et al. 1963, pp. 1-17.
2. ^ Franklin D. Roosevelt: Campaigns and elections. ( October 10, 2014 memento on the Internet Archive ) Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia.