1932 U.S. presidential election

On November 8, 1932, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York, defeated President Herbert Hoover in a landslide. Roosevelt won 472 electoral votes and 57.4 percent of the popular vote. Hoover took 59 electoral votes and 39.7 percent, carrying only six states in the Northeast. Democrats also won large majorities in both houses of Congress. Roosevelt's running mate was House Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas.¹²

The election was a verdict on the Great Depression. Since the 1929 crash, thousands of banks had failed, farm prices had collapsed and about a quarter of the workforce was unemployed. Hoover had tried public works and emergency lending, but he resisted direct federal relief and insisted recovery was near. In July 1932 the army drove the Bonus Army, jobless veterans camped in Washington, out of the capital, a scene that hurt Hoover badly. Roosevelt broke tradition by flying to the Democratic convention in Chicago to accept the nomination in person, promising 'a new deal for the American people.'¹

Roosevelt offered few specifics, but he projected confidence and a willingness to experiment. Between the election and his March 1933 inauguration, the banking system slid into panic, and he took office with banks closed across the country. The election began a political realignment: a New Deal coalition of urban workers, Catholics, Jews, Southern whites, farmers and, increasingly, Black voters kept Democrats dominant for most of the next 36 years.¹