U.S. Presidential Election 1928

The 1928 presidential election was a battle between Republican candidate Herbert Hoover of California and Democratic nominee Al Smith, who served as Governor of New York. The great economic conditions

of the 1920s were attributed to Republican leadership, paving the way for the continued Republican reign. The election resulted in a landslide victory for Hoover, who became the thirty-first President of the United States.

Before the Republican National Convention of 1928, the competition was mainly between former Governor of Illinois, Frank Orren Lowden, who had attempted to earn the nomination during the previous election, and Charles Curtis, the Senate Majority Leader from Kansas. Incumbent President Calvin Coolidge decided not to run for reelection after serving a partial term after the death of President Harding, followed by a full term of his own. Herbert Hoover had not done well in the primaries, but Lowden dropped out of the race just before the convention and Hoover took the nomination. Incumbent vice president under Coolidge, Charles G. Dawes was an option for vice presidential nominee, but Coolidge requested that he not be chosen based on his personal dislike for Dawes. Instead, the convention selected runner-up, Charles Curtis to be Hoover’s running mate.

The Democratic Party knew there was a slim chance of winning the election over any Republican, since the economy was in great shape and there were no major conflicts. Many party leaders, like perennial candidate William Gibbs McAdoo declined to run for the nomination. Al Smith, who had fought for the nomination in 1924 in the epic hundred-ballot convention and lost, easily won the nomination in 1928 with not much opposition. Joseph T. Robinson was selected as his running mate.

The Prohibition Party, aware there was not much hope of winning the 1928 election, nearly supported Hoover, so they would not take votes away from him to allow for a Democratic win. Instead, they chose William F. Varney. The Socialist Party chose Norman Thomas as their new candidate, after the death of longtime leader Eugene V. Debs. James Maurer was selected to run alongside Thomas. The Communist Party elected William Z. Foster and Benjamin Gitlow to represent their party in the presidential election.

Hoover had the early lead as the Republican candidate, and the results went overwhelmingly in his favor. Smith was a Roman Catholic and anti-Catholic prejudices caused rumors and fears. His anti-prohibition views were also not popular during this period of prohibition. His religious beliefs did help secure the vote of recent European immigrants, winning him two states in the Northeast. Outside of these, Smith won only states in the Deep South, which were traditionally Democratic, for a total of 87 electoral votes. He even lost his home state, New York, though only by 2 percent. Hoover won the rest of the states, for a grand total of 444 electoral votes to become the next President of the United States.