Presidential election in the United States, 1928

‹  1924  •   •  1932 ›
36th presidential election
November 6, 1928
			Republican Party
			Herbert Hoover / Charles Curtis
			electors					444
			be right				21,427,123
									58.2%
			Democratic Party
			Al Smith / Joseph Robinson
			electors					87
			be right				15,015,464
									40.8%
Election results by state
40 states   Hoover / Curtis						8 states   Smith / Robinson
President of the United States
Before the election Calvin Coolidge Republican Party						Elected Herbert Hoover Republican Party

In the 1928 presidential election in the USA, the Republican Party with Herbert Hoover stood against the Democratic Party with Alfred E. Smith . Incumbent Republican President Calvin Coolidge did not run for re-election.

The Republicans represented a booming economy in the 1920s, and Smith, a supporter of the Roman Catholic Church , suffered politically from anti-Catholic prejudice in society, leading to a national victory for Hoover. Smith was the first Catholic ever to be nominated as a presidential candidate by one of the two major parties in the United States that had serious chances of winning the election. Smith had put the Protestant southerner Joseph Taylor Robinson , US Senator for Arkansas , as a runner-up for the presidency. The election campaign revolved around economic policy, the prohibition law that Smith criticized, and Smith's proposals to improve the civil rights of African Americans . He lost 41% to 58% very clearly, although he had won the majority of votes in the twelve largest cities in the USA. Fears that he would listen more to the Pope in Rome than to the United States Constitution contributed to this defeat. Smith was only able to win in the states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island , where many Catholics lived, and in six states of Solid South . In the southern states, Smith lost a particularly large number of votes because of his religious affiliation, but the decades-old dominance of the Democrats in this part of the country continued.

The election was the reason for the Times Square news ticker, designed to enable New Yorkers to quickly find out the results of the election.

With the victory of Hoover, Charles Curtis became a Native American American Vice President for the first time .

Result

candidate	Political party	be right		electors
		number	percent
Herbert Hoover	republican	21,427,123	58.2%	444
Alfred E. Smith	democrat	15,015,464	40.8%	87
Norman Thomas	socialist	267,478	0.7%	0
William Z. Foster	Communist	48,551	0.1%	0
Other		48,396	0.1%	0
total		36,807,012	100%	531

266 votes were necessary for the election to the president.

In culture

In the documentary Prohibition of Ken Burns , the election campaign in 1928 is discussed.

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. 337-346 (= Chapter 38: Herbert Hoover's Election. ).
• William E. Leuchtenburg : Herbert Hoover (= The American Presidents Series. Ed. By Arthur M. Schlesinger , Sean Wilentz . The 31st President). Times Books, New York City 2009, ISBN 978-0-8050-6958-7 , pp. 71-79 (= 5. The Road to the White House ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Article in the Encyclopedia Britannica
2. ^ Robert A. Slayton: Empire Statesman. The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith. Free Press, New York NY et al. 2001, ISBN 0-684-86302-2 , p. 304.
3. ^ Arthur Schlesinger Jr .: O'Connor, Vaughan, Cuomo, Al Smith, JFK - The New York Times . February 2, 1990. Retrieved May 19, 2009. 

Web links

Commons : United States Presidential Election 1928  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files