History 211: History of US Elections

American Youth Congress poster, 1930s

The election widely considered the most one-sided in the history of presidential politics coincided with a shift from hereditary politics. Mass political student organizing ascended in 1936. But such a surge didn’t necessarily correlate with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decisive victory over Alf Landon, the Republican Governor of Kansas. Instead, students rallied behind Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate. During the American Left’s peak years (1936-39), the movement mobilized at least 500,000 collegians—roughly half of the American student body. In unprecedented numbers, female students were leaving the ideologically conservative party of their parents to join Thomas’s Socialist movement.

During the Great Depression, the majority of female students came from conservative middle-class families. Yet cultural changes caused students to stray from their parents’ conservative values. A study of college students’ social attitudes in 1936 found that many began to adopt a more liberal mindset, and accept dispositions formerly forbidden. Social changes such as “a decline in religious interest,” and “the lifting of taboos among women on sex attraction” caused women to reevaluate their beliefs. Such changes had repercussions on the political sphere leading up to Election Day.

A 1935 autobiographical sketch by Alice Dodge revealed that despite her conservative upbringing, she ultimately joined the Socialist organization, Student League for Industrial Democracy. Her father nearly always voted Republican, as did her mother to display loyalty to her husband. Yet, Alice did not share the same compulsions as her mother. “One by one my parents have seen their four daughters emerge from Vassar no longer Republicans,” Alice explained, saying she personally “belongs to the Socialist Party.”

November 3, 1936, Election Day, signified a sharp shift in inherited politics. In a letter to the editor in LIFE magazine, a female voter reflected on the rise of student momentum. “The first time, in 1932, I voted for [Herbert] Hoover because my mother did,” she said, yet, “the second time, in 1936, I voted for Norman Thomas because at that time I was in a fever of youthful zeal to change the world overnight.”

In hindsight, it is easy to correlate Roosevelt’s triumph with student organizing in the 1930s. However, Roosevelt was not the candidate who galvanized students in ’36. And since Roosevelt became the first Democratic presidential candidate in more than a decade to capture the majority of student voters—48.3 percent—it’s natural to associate him with the mass student movement. This assumption is flawed.

Although Thomas only received 187,720 votes, his ability to mobilize students had a symbolic impact. In a letter to the editor of The New York Times the day after the election, one voter expressed fear of the sudden influx of Socialist views at the College of the City of New York. “When one considers,” he argued, “that Mr. Thomas got 261 from a total of 2,233 votes, it can be well realized that the charge of communism and socialism today is well founded.”

Thomas agreed, and when he was notified of Roosevelt’s overwhelming win, he said, “never was our Socialist message more necessary than today.” The student movement during the mid-1930s served as a precursor to the anti-war student movement of the 1960s. Norman Thomas attributed his 1936 loss to the fact that “too often we vote our fears, not our hopes.” However, the 1936 election signified the moment that many college students began to vote with their hopes, by proving they did fear leaving the party of their parents.

The 1936 Presidential Election in New York City.

Posted on October 11, 2010 by bradmeisel

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   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.

This 1884 cartoon from the periodical "Puck" depicts James Blaine as being tattooed and unable to escape the scandals of his past. Note "Mulligan Letters" written on his torso.

On November 4, 1884, John Kelly awoke to grey clouds and political uncertainty hanging over New York City. Mr. Kelly, the boss of New York’s notorious Tammany Hall, had gone to bed the night before election day having optimistically told supporters of Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland that “everything politically looks most encouraging. I have no doubt of Cleveland’s election.”** The Republicans, who were counting on James G. Blaine to extend their stay in the White house into its twenty-fifth year, were equally confident: “I think now what I have always thought – that we will carry all the Northern States without exception . . . Blaine is as good as elected,” boasted B.F. Jones, the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

But the party leaders’ public certainty belied the race’s closeness. Out of about ten million votes cast, Cleveland won the national popular vote by just over 25,000 votes. Not only was the voting close, turnout was high nationwide. The Milwaukee Daily Journal reported record turnout and Boston saw a large turnout by Harvard students. Of course, elections are won at the state level and in 1884, New York was crucial. Over a million New Yorkers voted and Cleveland captured the pivotal state (and all 36 electors) by a margin of only 1,047 votes.

Cleveland’s victory capped what was an unusually personal campaign for the time. Historian Mark Summers argues that voters in 1884 “sensed a political system breaking apart” and were beginning to care less about loyalty to party and more about individual candidates and their stances on issues. Considering that the bulk of campaign coverage focused on the integrity (or lack thereof) of the candidates, the conventional narrative that stresses the impact of scandal rather than issues is more convincing. What is clear – and Mr. Summers would likely agree – is that candidates and their personalities, stances, and mistakes were becoming increasingly important as individuals.

There certainly was no shortage of mistakes or scandals when it came to Grover Cleveland and James Blaine. Blaine, during his time as a U.S. Representative from Maine (later Speaker of the House) was an active participant in patronage politics. Eight years earlier, during the 1876 election, a Boston bookkeeper named James Mulligan uncovered letters that strongly suggested Blaine’s involvement in the issue of fraudulent public bonds and other forms of corruption. Blaine angrily demanded that the “Mulligan Letters,” as they became known, be returned on the grounds that they were private correspondence. On top of questions about his integrity, he failed to condemn Reverend Samuel D. Burchard who referred, at a Blaine campaign event, to the Democratic party as the part of “rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” His seemingly trivial failure to reject this caricature likely lost him the votes of any previously sympathetic Irish Catholics, many of whom lived in New York.

Cleveland, the governor of New York, had issues of his own. He fathered an illegitimate child in 1874 with a woman named Maria Halpern; this came to light during July of 1884. This accusation was magnified by the allegation that the Governor had forced Ms. Halpern into exile. Cleveland had built his public image around trust (“Public office is a public trust,” he said) so he admitted having had improper relations with the woman, while denying that he had forced her into exile.

Evidently, Cleveland’s private scandal proved less damaging than Blaine’s impropriety in public office and carelessness on the campaign trail. A group of reform-minded northeastern Republicans known as Mugwumps supported Cleveland on the grounds that Blaine was too corrupt to serve. Blaine’s inability to effectively counter charges of corruption and his failure to condemn Rev. Burchard’s remarks cost him New York. Without New York, he could not win the election, and Cleveland won by the slimmest of margins.

By the end of the year, John Kelly, his health failing and influence curtailed, retired. The Democrats had broken the 25 year-old Republican stranglehold on the White House, ushering in an increasingly competitive era in American politics.

**It is possible that Kelly’s public message was inconsistent with his work outside the public eye. He had proudly opposed Cleveland’s nomination, and The New York Times suggested on more than one occasion that Kelly continued to work against him. But no Democratic source can support the Republican Times, so the truth of these accusations is suspect. (Examples one, two, and three)