United States presidential election, 1928

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United States presidential election, 1928
6 November 1928

Nominee	Herbert Hoover	Al Smith
Party	Republican	Democratic
Home state	California	New York
Running mate	Charles Curtis	Joseph Taylor Robinson
Electoral vote	444	87
States carried	40	8
Popular vote	21,427,123	15,015,464
Percentage	58.2%	40.8%

Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Hoover/Curtis, Blue denotes those won by Smith/Robinson. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
Incumbent President Calvin Coolidge Republican President-Elect Herbert Hoover Republican

The United States presidential election of 1928 pitted Republican Herbert Hoover against Democrat Al Smith. The Republicans were identified with the booming economy of the 1920s^{[citation needed]}, whereas Smith, a Roman Catholic, suffered politically from anti-Catholic prejudice, his anti-prohibitionist stance, and the legacy of corruption of Tammany Hall with which he was associated.^{[citation needed]} Hoover won a landslide victory.

1 Nominations
2 General election
- 2.1 Results
3 Bibliography
- 3.1 Primary sources
4 See also
5 References
6 External links
7 Navigation

[edit] Nominations

[edit] Republican Party nomination

With President Coolidge choosing not to enter the race, the race for the nomination was wide open. The leading candidates were Secretary of Commerce Herbert C. Hoover, former Illinois Governor Frank O. Lowden and Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis. There was also a draft-Coolidge movement, which failed to gain significant traction.^{[citation needed]}

In the few primaries that mattered Hoover didn't do as well as expected, and it was thought that the President or Vice President Charles Dawes might accept a draft in case of a deadlock, but Lowden withdrew just as the convention was about to start, paving the way for a Hoover victory.^{[citation needed]}

The Republican Convention was held in Kansas City, Missouri from June 12 to June 15, and the results were:

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 this information leaked, Coolidge sent an angry telegram saying that he would consider a second nomination for Dawes, whom he hated, a "personal affront."^{[citation needed]} So, it was offered to Senator Curtis, who accepted, and he was nominated unanimously.^{[citation needed]}

In his acceptance speech a week after the convention ended, Secretary 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."^[1]

Candidates:

US Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis from Kansas	Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover of California	former Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois	X Senator Frederick Steiwer of Oregon
Senator James Watson of Indiana	Senator Frank Willis of Ohio

[edit] Democratic Party nomination

Candidates:

former Secretary of War Newton Baker of Ohio

Representative Cordell Hull of Tennessee

Senator James A. Reed of Missouri

Governor Al Smith of New York

With the memory of the Teapot Dome scandal rapidly fading, and the current state of prosperity making that year's Presidential nomination not worth all that much, most of the major Democratic leaders such as William G. McAdoo were content to sit this one out.^{[citation needed]} One who didn't was NY Governor Alfred E. Smith, who had tried twice before. The party bosses decided that it was safe to give him what would be, for all intents and purposes, an empty honor.^{[citation needed]}

The 1928 Democratic National Convention was held in Houston, Texas, June 26 to June 28 and Smith became the candidate on the first ballot.

The leadership asked the delegates to nominate Sen. Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, who was in many ways Smith's political polar opposite,^{[citation needed]} to be his running mate, and he was nominated for Vice-President.^{[citation needed]}

Smith was the first Roman Catholic to gain a major party's nomination for President, and his religion became an issue during the campaign.^{[citation needed]} Many Protestants feared that Smith would take orders from church leaders in Rome in making decisions affecting the country.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Prohibition Party nomination

The Prohibition Convention was held in Chicago from July 10 through July 12. Although Smith did not openly come out against Prohibition, he was perceived by many as soft in the war against alcohol.^{[citation needed]} Some members of the Prohibition Party wanted to throw their support to Hoover, thinking that their candidate would not win and that they didn't want their candidate to provide the margin by which Smith would win.^{[citation needed]} Nonetheless, William F. Varney was nominated for President over Hoover by a margin of 68–45. Hoover was on the California ballot as the Prohibition candidate.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Socialist Party nomination

With the death of Eugene V. Debs in 1926, the party needed a new standard-bearer, and found one in Norman Thomas, who would be nominated for the next twenty years.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] General election

A campaign truck advertises that Hoover's story is being conveyed by the new medium of "talking pictures," 1928.

With both major candidates actually actively campaigning across the country, plus the introduction of such novelties as radio commercials and sound newsreels, the 1928 fall campaign may well be considered the first modern presidential race.^{[citation needed]}^{[original research?]}

[edit] Results

The election was held on November 6, 1928.

Republican candidate Herbert Hoover won election by a wide margin on pledges to continue the economic boom of the Coolidge years. Smith won the electoral votes only of the traditionally Democratic Southern United States and two New England States. Hoover even triumphed in Smith's home state of New York by a narrow margin.

Smith's Catholicism and perceived anti-Prohibitionism as well as association with Tammany Hall hurt him in the South,^{[citation needed]} where several states were won by the Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction. However, in southern states with sizeable African American populations (and where the vast majority of African Americans could not vote at the time), perception took hold of Hoover as being for integration or at least not committed to maintaining segregation, which in turn overcame all of these things.^{[citation needed]} During the race, Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo claimed that Hoover had met with a black member of the Republican National Committee and danced with her.^[2] But Smith's religion helped him with New England immigrants, which may explain his narrow victories in traditionally Republican Massachusetts and Rhode Island.^{[citation needed]}^{[original research?]}

Smith achieved one other distinction in this election: the Democrats won a majority of large cities for the first time, including the country's 12 most populous cities, signaling a trend of immense significance.^{[citation needed]}

Presidential Candidate	Party	Home State	Popular Vote		Electoral Vote	Running Mate	Running Mate's Home State	RM's Electoral Vote
Presidential Candidate	Party	Home State	Count	Pct	Electoral Vote	Running Mate	Running Mate's Home State	RM's Electoral Vote
Herbert Hoover	Republican	Iowa	21,427,123	58.2%	444	Charles Curtis	Kansas	444
Alfred E. Smith	Democratic	New York	15,015,464	40.8%	87	Joseph Taylor Robinson	Arkansas	87
Norman Thomas	Socialist	New York	267,478	0.7%	0	James H. Maurer	Pennsylvania	0
William Z. Foster	Communist	Illinois	48,551	0.1%	0	Benjamin Gitlow	New York	0
Other			48,396	0.1%	–	Other		–
Total			36,807,012	100 %	531			531
Needed to win					266			266

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1928 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 28, 2005).

Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 28, 2005).

[edit] Bibliography

Kristi Andersen, The Creation of a Democratic Majority: 1928-1936 (1979), statistical analysis of voting
Bornet, Vaughn Davis; Labor Politics in a Democratic Republic: Moderation, Division, and Disruption in the Presidential Election of 1928 (1964) online edition
Douglas B. Craig. After Wilson: The Struggle for Control of the Democratic Party, 1920-1934 (1992)online edition see Chap. 6 "The Problem of Al Smith" and Chap. 8 "'Wall Street Likes Al Smith': The Election of 1928"
Christopher M. Finan. Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior. (2003)
Michael J. Hostetler; "Gov. Al Smith Confronts the Catholic Question: The Rhetorical Legacy of the 1928 Campaign" Communication Quarterly, Vol. 46, 1998
Lichtman, Allan. Prejudice and the old politics: The Presidential election of 1928 (1979), statistical study
Edmund A. Moore; A Catholic Runs for President: The Campaign of 1928 (1956) online edition
Daniel F. Rulli; "Campaigning in 1928: Chickens in Pots and Cars in Backyards," Teaching History: A Journal of Methods, Vol. 31#1 pp 42+ (2006) online version with lesson plans for class
Robert A. Slayton, Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith (2001), is the standard scholarly biography
Sweeney, James R. “Rum, Romanism, and Virginia Democrats: The Party Leaders and the Campaign of 1928.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 90 (October 1982): 403–31.