The 1932 United States presidential election was the 37th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1932. The election took place against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover was defeated in a landslide by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Governor of New York and the vice presidential nominee of the 1920 presidential election. Roosevelt was the first Democrat in 80 years to win an outright majority in the popular and electoral votes, the last one being Franklin Pierce in 1852. Hoover was the last elected incumbent president to lose re-election until Jimmy Carter lost 48 years later.
Results[]
1932 was a political realignment election: not only did Roosevelt win a sweeping victory over Hoover, but Democrats significantly extended their control over the U.S. House, gaining 101 seats, and also gained 12 seats in the U.S. Senate to gain control of the chamber. Twelve years of Republican leadership came to an end, and 20 consecutive years of Democratic control of the White House began. Until 1932, the Republicans had controlled the presidency for 52 of the previous 72 years, dating back to Abraham Lincoln being elected president in 1860. After 1932, Democrats would control the presidency for 28 of the next 36 years.
The Roosevelt ticket swept every region of the country except the Northeast, and carried many reliable Republican states that had not been carried by the Democrats since their electoral landslide of 1912, when the Republican vote was split in two. Michigan voted Democratic for the first time since the emergence of the Republican Party in 1854, and Minnesota was carried by a Democrat for the first time since its admission to statehood in 1858, leaving Vermont as the only remaining state never to be carried by a Democratic candidate (which it would not be until 1964).
| Presidential candidate | Party | Home state | Popular vote | Electoral vote | Vice presidential candidate | Home state | Electoral vote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Percentage | |||||||
| Franklin D. Roosevelt | Democratic | New York | 22,821,277 | 57.41% | 472 | John Nance Garner | Texas | 472 |
| Herbert Hoover* | Republican | California | 15,761,254 | 39.65% | 59 | Charles Curtis* | Kansas | 59 |
| Norman Thomas | Socialist | New York | 884,885 | 2.23% | 0 | James H. Maurer | Pennsylvania | 0 |
| Others | 284,482 | 0.72% | 0 | Others | 0 | |||
| Total | 39,751,898 | 100.00% | 531 | Total | 531 | |||
| Needed to win | 266 | Needed to win | 266 | |||||
| *Incumbent | ||||||||
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