Looking back at a blowout, the Presidential Election of 1936
I review "Roosevelt Sweeps Nation: FDR's 1936 Landslide & the Triumph of the Liberal Ideal" by David Pietrusza
In an earlier life (like a few years ago), I wrote A LOT at the blog One Through Forty-Two or Forty-Three about Presidential biographies and later elections. But I’ve decided to move any new contributions over to here because it’s a lot easier to write here.
The Election of 1936 is not a subject of a lot of study, mostly because it is the biggest blowout, in terms of the electoral vote, of any contested election in United States history. Franklin Roosevelt “edged” Kansas governor Alf Landon by a margin of 523 to 8.1 The popular vote favored Roosevelt by a margin of 61%-37%. 2
Was there anything interesting about this? Was it just the case that an extremely popular incumbent ran against a mediocre candidate? Did anyone think this would be close?
To answer each question.
Yes
No
Yes
Roosevelt’s New Deal programs in 1933 were both very popular at the time (mostly because times were extraordinarily terrible) and revolutionary (because the Federal government wasn’t in the business of helping out people in this way). So Roosevelt was loved by a lot and hated by a lot. The question was: who was there more of?
Some mainstream politicians maintained that the New Deal would be repudiated by the people once they realized that they were embracing “socialism.” These would be people like FDR’s former friend and political ally, Al Smith. However, Smith, who had earlier positioned himself as a friend of the common man, but Smith was out of touch. He got a job running the new Empire State Building, which had a left of empty office space to fill. Because it was the Great Depression.
Herbert Hoover, who was humiliated by Roosevelt in 1932, still thought he would be a good candidate. People just needed to see how the error of their ways and run back to the comforting arms of Hoover. The Republican Party decided it was best to not get back in the Herbert Hoover business.
Then there were demagogues:
Louisiana Senator Huey Long proposed his “Share the Wealth” (also called “Share Our Wealth”) program which would bring about a variety of helpful social programs (old age pension, health insurance among them) by limiting inheritances to $5 million, personal income to $1 million per year, and a total of $50 million total wealth. Anything above those totals would go to the government. Long said this would guarantee every family about $5000 per year, but the math worked out to far less. No one got a chance to figure out the math because Long was assassinated in 1935.
A retired California doctor, Francis Townsend, championed a plan called, imaginatively, the Townsend Plan. This would be a $200 montly pension paid to everyone over 60 (with the provision that all the money be spent) and financed by a 2% national sales tax. The Townsend Plan became very popular, but eventually FDR was able to work around through the development of the Social Security program.
Socialist Norman Thomas and Communist Earl Browder had their supporters, but the country was not ready for either of those men.
Georgia governor Eugene Talmadge, tried to run and use some of the late Huey Long’s Southern support, but he never got anywhere as a conservative Democratic challenger to Roosevelt, mostly because he was something of an idiot and very racist.
Father Charles Coughlin was not a candidate for office as he was born in Canada and a Catholic priest, but he had a huge following at the time thanks to a widely heard radio program. Coughlin supported Roosevelt in 1932, but fell out with him later over the U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union. Coughlin railed a lot against bankers. And Jews. And Jewish bankers especially. Coughlin pulled together a third party, called the Union Party, and it ran North Dakota Representative William Lemke for President.
Lots of other weirdos, otherwise unassigned.
Ultimately, the 1936 race was going to come down to a showdown between Roosevelt and whomever the Republicans could get to run.
There were two serious candidates for the Republicans. One was Idaho Senator William Borah, a progressive, even liberal Republican. The other was Kansas Governor Alfred P. Landon, a more conservative Republican.
Borah was 70 years old when the campaign started and that was considered something of a hindrance at the time. He also had reputation as a womanizer and it was an open secret in Washington that he had fathered a child out of wedlock with Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who was married to the Speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth at the time.3 Alice Roosevelt Longworth wanted to name her daughter Deborah (De Borah - from Borah), but opted for Paulina instead.
Borah won five primaries, but he was never going to capture the Republican establishment in the rest of the country. That left Landon, one of only two Republican governors west of the Mississippi to be elected since 1932,4 to win the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican Convention in Cleveland. Frank Knox, a Chicago newspaper publisher, was picked for the VP slot.
Roosevelt and his Vice President, John Nance Garner, who really did not like Roosevelt much, were renominated without opposition. Garner, who had been in politics for a long time, predicted a big win for the Democrats.
However, Garner’s view did not match the political polling of the era. One of the most famous polls of the era was conducted by a magazine called Literary Digest, which sent out questionnaires to people it selected from its subscribers. Despite not doing random sampling, the magazine’s polls had been pretty accurate in the most recent elections. And in 1936, the magazine was calling for a big Alf Landon win.
Other pollsters of the era, who would become household names, George Gallup and Elmo Roper, used much more accurate scientific sampling, and those polls tended favor Roosevelt, although Landon was fairly close or a little bit ahead in the summer of 1936.
Landon was not a charismatic campaigner and his delivery both in person and on the radio paled in comparison to Roosevelt.
Roosevelt and the Democratic Party were not particularly popular with the major media companies of the time. The people who would subscribe to The New Yorker at the time frequently ridiculed Roosevelt.
However, Roosevelt was enormously popular with the lower and middle classes which were huge at this time. Roosevelt also benefited from the phenomenon that the political parties were still regional at the time. So the South voted almost en masse for Democratic candidates (Herbert Hoover had some success, but it would take Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon to break into that region for the Republicans). The Republicans needed to win New York to have any chance, and then hope that their other big states, like Ohio and Pennsylvania, held for them.
Roosevelt also had the inherent advantage of the incumbency working for him and used it in a way that few others did. The New Deal was a never ending source of patronage that could be bestowed on just about any place in the country. And Roosevelt was not afraid to do that.
While some Republicans, including Landon’s wife Theo who had baked a “Victory Cake”, still believed that Landon would prevail and the Republicans would make gains in the House, they were either putting up a brave front or deluded.
Roosevelt won 46 of 48 states, all but Maine and Vermont. Roosevelt even won Landon’s home state of Kansas by eight points. The number of Republicans in the House dropped to 88 seats. In the Senate, the Republican membership dwindled down to 17.5
There have been landslide elections in our lifetimes. Depending on your age, you may have lived through Richard Nixon’s 520-17 defeat of George McGovern in 1972. Ronald Reagan was reelected by a 525-13 margin in 1984 over Walter Mondale. Both McGovern and Mondale won the District of Columbia in their elections. McGovern’s other win was Massachusetts. Mondale just held on to his home state of Minnesota. However, in neither of these elections was there a similar landslide in Congress
In 1972, the Republicans picked up 12 House seats, but remained in the minority. In the Senate, the Republicans lost two seats. In 1984, the Republicans picked up 16 House seats, but still were in the minority. The Republicans majority in the Senate shrunk by two seats.
The American political system is too polarized now for anyone to pull off a win of the magnitude of 1936, 1972, or 1984. No President is ever very popular anymore with the whole country anymore.
Maine and Vermont would never vote for Roosevelt in any of his four elections. In 1940, the Republicans, led by Wendell Willkie, regained some states in the Plains, and in 1944 , Thomas Dewey added a couple Midwestern states to the tally.
Has the landslide presidential election gone the way of the passenger pigeon? I remember telling someone, with a degree of certainty that I possessed when I was in my 20s, that America would never elect a president through the electoral vote who had not won the popular vote.
The Electoral College was 531 votes at the time with 266 needed to win. It’s 538 and 270 win to win after the addition of four votes from Alaska and Hawaii in 1960 and three from D.C in 1964. There were 536 electors in 1960 because the House went with 437 members until 1962. This is in case you weren’t scoring at home.
Richard Nixon fared a little better in the popular vote against George McGovern in 1972. Ronald Reagan’s margin over Walter Mondale in 1984 was much smaller. George Washington had no opposition for both his elections. James Monroe was unopposed for reelection in 1820, but one elector refused to vote for him.
Their marriage was a bit troubled. Early in the marriage, Alice campaigned for Nicholas’ opponent in a race and her husband lost. This put a damper on their relationship. Both parties cheated on each other. Otherwise, they were very happy.
The other was Frank Merriam of California, who defeated Upton Sinclair in 1934 after a huge push by the Hollywood studios to prop up one of the least competent governors (i.e. Merriam) in California history over the socialist Sinclair.
The Republicans actually flipped one Senate seat in 1936. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. defeated Boston Mayor James Curley. Lodge served in the Senate until 1944 when he left to join the Army. He regained his seat in 1947 and then lost a reelection bid in 1952 to John F. Kennedy.
Interesting article, Bob! I wonder how the Long and Townsend plans were written - certainly not all families or people over 60 would have been eligible for this government money.
Sorry to learn your hero Earl Browder didn't win.