The story
On November 3, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won a second term by crushing Republican Alf Landon, the governor of Kansas. Roosevelt took 523 of 531 electoral votes and 60.8 percent of the popular vote. Landon won only Maine and Vermont, with 8 electoral votes and 36.5 percent. William Lemke of the new Union Party, backed by the radio priest Charles Coughlin, drew under 2 percent.
The vote was a referendum on the New Deal. In his first term Roosevelt had created Social Security, protected union organizing with the Wagner Act and put millions to work through the Works Progress Administration, while unemployment had fallen from its 1933 peak. Republicans attacked the spending and new federal power as a threat to liberty. The result cemented the New Deal coalition, including a historic shift of Black voters from the party of Lincoln to the Democrats, and gave Democrats huge majorities in Congress.
Why it mattered
- The landslide emboldened Roosevelt's 1937 plan to enlarge the Supreme Court, which backfired politically.
- Social Security and union protections became durable parts of American life after voters endorsed them.
- The failed Literary Digest poll pushed pollsters toward scientific sampling, led by George Gallup.
Sources
- 1936 Electoral College Results National Archives
- President Landon and the 1936 Literary Digest Poll Social Science History (Cambridge University Press)
Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made
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