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5 - TABLES TURN: THE NEW DEAL ERA AND DEMOCRATIC DOMINANCE, 1932–1948

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Mark D. Brewer  and
Jeffrey M. Stonecash
Mark D. Brewer
Affiliation:
University of Maine, Orono
Jeffrey M. Stonecash
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, New York
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Summary

AL SMITH AND THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1928

The year 1928 did not appear to be a good year for the Democratic Party. The party's presidential candidate, former New York Governor Al Smith, lost to Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover in landslide fashion in the popular vote (58 to 41 percent), failing even to perform up to par in the Democratic base of the former Confederacy (Smith won only six of the eleven Southern states). Already in the minority in both the House and the Senate, the Democrats lost another thirty-two seats in the lower chamber and seven more in the upper chamber, along with losing a vacant seat election to the GOP.

Although Democrats were soundly thrashed in the 1928 election cycle, some results did offer the party a few rays of hope. Smith received only 41 percent of the popular vote, but this figure was significantly higher than the 34 percent received by Democratic candidate James Cox in 1920 and the 29 percent received by Democrat John Davis in 1924. In addition, Smith may have carried only eight states, but two of them – Massachusetts and Rhode Island – were states that the Democrats had managed to win only once before (1912) since 1876. These facts provided the Democrats with a little silver lining to the dark cloud that was the 1928 election cycle.

Type
Chapter
Information
Dynamics of American Political Parties , pp. 66 - 80
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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