Author: bradmeisel

 http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b23344/, this photo is a public domain image from the Library of Congress. 

“Wherever one went, it was impossible not to notice the predominance of women voters during the forenoon,” the Boston Daily Globe reported on November 3, 1920.  The previous day, the first Presidential election was held since the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted women over the age of 21 the right to vote earlier that year (“Women by Thousands Pour Into Polling Places in the Bay State.” Boston Daily Globe. 3 November, 1920, 20.).

The 1920 Presidential Election, the first since the conclusion of World War One, pitted Ohio Republican Senator Warren G. Harding and his running mate, Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge against Ohio Democratic Governor James M. Cox and former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and future President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Harding and Cox vied to succeed two term Democratic President Woodrow Wilson (“The Presidential Election of 1920.” United States Library of Congress. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/nfhtml/nfexpe.html).  According to historians William Binning, Larry Esterly, and Paul Sracic, the election was “a referendum on the Wilson administration,” especially in terms of the outgoing President’s ardent support for the nation’s entry into the new League of Nations, the unpopularity of which led many voters to favor Harding’s calls for a return to normalcy (Binning, William, and Larry Esterly and Paul Sracic. Encyclopedia of American Parties, Campaigns and Elections. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999, 66).  Unlike his Democratic opponent, Harding took a firm stand on the other major issue of the campaign when he “pledged to enforce” the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which the previous year prohibited alcohol, according to historian David Kyvig (Kyvig, David. Repealing National Prohibition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979, 29). 

On Election Day, November 2, 1920, many women rushed to exercise their newfound right to vote.  The Boston Daily Globe reported the following day that when the polls opened in the morning in many towns outside the city “women, old and young, married and single, most of them under no compulsion to vote at that daylight hour, had come forward with pride and eagerness to be among the first.”  The Boston Daily Globe also reported that a number of women voters initially failed to grasp the concept of the anonymous secret ballot, as evidenced by a woman asking the warden at a polling place “Do I sign my name on the back of the ballot?” (“Women by Thousands Pour Into Polling Places in the Bay State.” Boston Daily Globe. 3 November, 1920, 20.).   The New York Times reported that “Women showed intense interest in the election.  In many districts, more women than men went to the polling places in the morning.  In the first hour, it was not uncommon to see when on their way either from or to the grocery” (“Thousands Carry Lunches to the Polls.” New York Times. 3 November, 1920, 11). 

This influx of motivated women voters, which was seen throughout the nation, likely contributed to Harding’s landslide victory, the largest since “the Republican landslide of 1904,” in which Theodore Roosevelt won his second term.  (“Cox and League Buried Under Huge Majority.” Chicago Daily Tribune. 3 November, 1920, 1). 

This conclusion is supported by statisticians Malcolm Wiley and Stuart Rice, who studied voting records in the state of Illinois, where male and female ballots “were separately recorded,” in addition to simultaneous local elections where social issues played prominent roles.  Rice and Wiley determined that women voters, “especially in the northern states” trended more Republican than their male counterparts because women tended to be on the “’moral’ and conservative sides in local elections,” and “Harding of the two candidates was widely believed to be the more conservative,” on social issues such as prohibition.  (“Rice, Stuart, and Willey, Malcolm. “A Sex Cleavage in the Presidential Election of 1920.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 19, no. 148, (1924): 519-520.)

The 1936 Presidential Election in New York City.

Posted on October 11, 2010 by bradmeisel

   http://www.legacyamericana.com/servlet/the-19914/Pinback-button-promoting-Franklin/Detail Copyright, Legacy Americana, LLC.    

   On election day, November 3, 1936, “a crowd estimated by the police at ‘a million’ persons kept Times Square and the theater district in continual uproar last night as news of the President’s reelection flashed from The Times tower” (“Election Crowd in a Merry Mood.” New York Times. 4 November, 1936, 5).            

The 1936 Presidential election pitted Democratic President and former New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt and Vice President John Garner, who were elected in a landslide four years prior, against the Republican ticket of Kansas Governor Alf Landon and Chicago newspaper publisher Frank Knox.  According to historian Michael J. Webber, President Roosevelt’s first term in office saw the emergence of a “new welfare state,” as a result of his agenda of sweeping reforms, known as the New Deal, which were aimed at alleviating the Great Depression.  As a result, the Presidential election “was, in many ways, a referendum on the activist role taken on by the federal government since the inception of the New Deal.”   (Webber, Michael J. New Deal Fat Cats: Business, Labor, and Campaign Finance in the 1936 Presidential Election. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000, 127). 

The New Deal included the creation of Social Security, which provided financial assistance to elderly Americans, the Works Progress Administration, which employed people who were previously unemployed to participate in public works projects, and agencies such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which served to regulate business and protect consumers. 

            On Election Day, the American electorate, comprised of men and women over the age of 21, delivered a clear statement of support for President Roosevelt’s agenda.  The next day, voting returns across the entire nation implied “that more Americans than ever went to the polls” (“A Record Vote.” New York Times. 4 November, 1936, 30). 

In the New York metropolitan area “the President maintained a 3 to 1 ratio” over Landon with heavy turnout, allowing him to carry his home state by one million votes despite “an upsurge of Republican votes” upstate (“President Piles Up 1,000,000 New York Lead.” Associated Press. 4 November, 1936, 1). 

            In the late afternoon on Election Day, throngs of Roosevelt supporters congregated in Times Square to watch as the incoming returns were displayed on The Times Building.  “By 6 P.M. Times Square was comfortably filled,” and within two hours, the crowd spilled out “north of the square.”  When it became evident that the Democratic ticket had emerged victorious, a jubilant celebration erupted, and “streamers flew.”  New York Police Deputy Chief Inspector Patrick Murphy was quoted as saying that “Never in all my years of experience have I seen such a mob of cheering, shouting spectators” (“Election Crowd in a Merry Mood.” New York Times. 4 November, 1936, 5). 

            A similar scene unfolded in Chicago, where “several thousands of Democrats staged a wild victory celebration.”  Democratic campaign workers joined enthusiastic citizens in the festivities after the results became evident.  Revelers “built bonfires in the streets, halted traffic,” and tore “trolley wires off several street cars.”  The swarm of people celebrating the President’s reelection grew so raucous that “extra police were sent to the scene,” in order to prevent “further damage” (“Wild Jubilee Held in Loop by Democrats.” Chicago Tribune, 4 November, 1936, 1). 

            The emphatic affirmation of the New Deal by the electorate in the Presidential Election of 1936, as demonstrated by the avalanche of voter enthusiasm in the New York metropolitan area, was emblematic of the emergence of a new Democratic voting bloc.  According to historian Michael J. Webber, Roosevelt’s landslide victory was a result of the formation of a “New Deal coalition,” which consisted of “organized labor, religious and ethnic minorities, the urban poor, liberals and progressives” (Webber, Michael J. New Deal Fat Cats: Business, Labor, and Campaign Finance in the 1936 Presidential Election. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000, 127). 

The President’s New Deal policies supported organized labor and established welfare programs to assist the urban poor, many of whom were members of the minority groups referred to by Webber, thereby solidifying these individuals’ fervent support for the Democratic party.  As New York and Chicago were two of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas and home to a plethora of ethnic groups and many working and lower class individuals, the President’s enthusiastic support in these cities was a strong indication of the emergence of the New Deal era Democratic constituency, the fruit of which continues to manifest itself in American electoral politics.