The Democratic Party became the nation’s majority party in the 1930s and retained its majority status during World War II and after. This constituted a major turning point in American politics, for at the outset of the Hoover presidency in 1929, the Republican Party seemed in a position of virtually unchallenged dominance. The normal majority party since the 1890s, Republicans had decisively won each of the three presidential elections in the 1920s and had controlled Congress throughout the decade. In 1928, Herbert C. Hoover defeated Democratic nominee Alfred E. Smith by a margin of 58.2 percent to 40.9 percent in the popular vote for president and by 444 to 87 votes in the electoral college. Republicans controlled the 71st Congress that met in 1929 by 267-167 in the House and by 56-39 in the Senate. The Democratic Party was badly divided between its urban and rural wings and offered neither substantial policy alternatives nor serious political challenge to the Republicans.
Then came the stock MARKET crash of late 1929, and over the next three years the Great Depression sent the economy spiraling down, with unemployment reaching at least one-fourth of the labor force and with national income down by more than 50 percent. The depression had devastating political consequences for Hoover and the Republican Party. In 1930, Democrats and Republicans virtually broke even in elections to the House of Representatives and the Senate. When the 72nd Congress met in 1931, Democrats controlled the House by 220-214 (because of the deaths and replacements that gave Democrats a net gain of three seats). Although Republicans nominally controlled the Senate by 48-47, that body was effectively in the hands of a coalition of Democrats and progressive Republicans.
The election of 1932 then completed the transfer of power from the Republicans to the Democrats. Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Hoover for the presidency by winning 42 of the 48 states, with 57.4 percent of the popular vote and 472 of the 531 votes in the electoral college. Democrats picked up some 90 additional seats in the House and 13 in the Senate and controlled the 73rd Congress that met in 1933 by 310-117 in the House and 60-35 in the Senate. The elections of 1930 and 1932 thus constituted a political turnaround of great magnitude—yet the electorate had voted much more against Hoover and the Republicans than for Roosevelt and the Democrats. Except for making it clear that he would be a more active president than Hoover, Roosevelt had not clearly or consistently said just what his policies would be. Voters also rejected truly radical alternatives in 1932, as they would throughout the depression decade, for Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party candidate, won just 2.2 percent of the vote, and the Communists just three-tenths of 1 percent.
In the off-year election of 1934 and then in the presidential election of 1936, voters returned powerful affirmative verdicts on Roosevelt and the New Deal to complete a realigning transformation of American politics that established the Democrats as the new majority party. In 1934, Democrats picked up nine additional House seats and another nine Senate seats—a significant departure from the previous off-year elections in the 20th century, when the incumbent president’s party had lost on average some three dozen seats in the House and three or four in the Senate. Then, in 1936, Roosevelt won 60.8 percent of the popular vote and 523 of the 531 votes in the electoral college; only Maine and Vermont voted for Republican candidate Alfred M. Landon. All minor party candidates combined won less than 3 percent of the vote, with Socialist and Communist candidates together winning less than 1 percent. And the Democrats increased still further their already top-heavy control of the Congress, outnumbering Republicans by 331-89 in the House and 76-16 in the Senate when the 75th Congress met in 1937.
The Democrats owed their new majority status to the Roosevelt coalition of voters forged from 1928 to 1936. The coalition showed some continuities from past voting patterns, but also reflected the impact of the depression, New Deal, and Franklin Roosevelt on American politics. In part the Democratic majority was based on the party’s continuing dominance of the “Solid South” that southern whites (most blacks remained disfranchised) had made reliably Democratic since the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Democrats also built upon and increased traditional strength among ethnic voters in cities, with heavy support from Catholics and Jews. African Americans shifted to the Democratic Party in the mid-1930s. Decisive margins among working-class and middle-class voters also contributed to the new Democratic majority; in 1936, Roosevelt won roughly 4 out of every 5 working-class and union voters, and 3 out of every 5 middle-class voters. Such strength among urban ethnic, black, and working-class voters helped Roosevelt and the Democrats to win most metropolitan areas by margins of two-thirds and more. For their part, Republicans continued to find their greatest support among upper-income and old-stock Protestant voters. Farmers voted heavily for Roosevelt in 1932; but by 1936, midwestern farmers had begun to return to their more traditional Republican moorings.
The structure of the Roosevelt coalition reflected the dynamics of American politics from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s. For one thing, it depended upon the continuing importance of ethnic identities in the era and the Democrats’ image as the more inclusive party. Democrats had nominated Al Smith for president in 1928, and millions of urban ethnic voters came to the polls for the first time, to rally behind Smith, a second-generation American and the first Catholic nominated for the presidency. Although he was soundly defeated, Smith’s 15 million votes were almost as many as Democrats had won in the past two presidential elections combined. Most of the new voters evidently stayed with the Democratic Party, largely because these predominantly working-class people were especially vulnerable to the depression and were then helped by New Deal policies. But the Democrats continued after 1928 to offer more government appointments and political nominations to Catholics and Jews and thus won their allegiance for ethnic as well as economic reasons.
Democratic majority. In 1932, massive switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party because of the depression produced Roosevelt’s landslide: Hoover had won 21.4 million votes in 1928, but just 15.8 million in 1932; by contrast, in 1932 Roosevelt won 22.8 million votes as against Smith’s 15 million in 1928. In 1936, the entry of millions of new voters into the active electorate, rather than voter
Switching, was the most important dynamic. Alf Landon actually won nearly a million more votes than Hoover had in 1932, but Roosevelt won almost 5 million votes more than in 1932 and increased his percentage of the popular vote from 57.4 to 60.8 percent. Some of Roosevelt’s higher totals came from African-American and other voters switching from the GOP, but most came from young, ethnic, black, and working-class voters entering the active electorate for the first time and voting overwhelmingly for Roosevelt and the Democrats. Women, especially working-class, ethnic, and black women, also voted in much larger numbers beginning in 1928, and also to the benefit of the Democrats. From 1924 to 1936, voter turnout increased by almost three-fifths, from 29.1 million to 45.6 million voters, with the big surges coming in 1928 and 1936 and among working-class, ethnic, and urban voters flocking to the Democratic Party.
But while some feared for the two-party system after the 1936 election, the Republican Party retained major sources of real and potential strength. In addition to their own large core of supporters, Republicans could appeal to those concerned about the direction of the New Deal and the Democratic Party. Though the election of 1936 had obviously ratified the New Deal, voters generally seem to have supported specific programs for practical reasons rather than being converted ideologically to an expansive liberalism. As subsequent events would show, traditional small-government and individualistic conservatism, opposed to a too-powerful central government, remained strong, even among many Democrats. Republicans made significant gains in the off-year election of 1938, especially because of the recession of 1937-1938, but also because of the court-packing plan and labor unrest and the opposition they generated. In a striking return to the customary pattern of the incumbent president’s party losing strength in off-year elections, the GOP gained 75 seats in the House and seven in the Senate. Democrats still easily controlled the Congress (261-164 in the House, 69-23 in the Senate), but an emerging conservative coalition of Republicans and conservative (especially southern) Democrats increasingly thwarted Roosevelt and liberal Democrats in their efforts to expand the New Deal.
Despite Republican gains and Democratic setbacks in the late 1930s, however, Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term in the election of 1940, and the new Democratic majority proved its durability. Roosevelt defeated Republican nominee Wendell L. Willkie by 54.8 to 44.8 percent in the popular vote and by 449 to 82 in the electoral college. Although the beginning of World War II in Europe produced a political context much different from the 1930s, the war figured less in the campaign and voting than did issues and party images from the depression and New Deal years. Accordingly, most voters voted as they had in 1936, and the Roosevelt coalition emerged largely intact from its first major test. To a significant degree, the victory was a personal one for Roosevelt himself, for Democrats picked up only a few seats in the House and lost three more in the Senate.
Republicans again made inroads into Democratic control of Congress in the off-year election of 1942, the first true wartime election in the United States. A number of things favored Republicans in 1942: Prosperity had returned, diminishing the impact of New Deal issues, especially with Roosevelt off the ballot; many voters were angry at inflation, shortages, and rationing on the home front; and the war effort down to election day seemed ineffective, with red-tape snarls affecting mobilization and with the Germans and Japanese seemingly successful in both the World War II European theater and the World War II Pacific theater of the war. Republicans gained 46 seats in the House and another nine senators, paring Democratic control to 218-208 in the House and 58-37 in the Senate and placing ideological control clearly in the hands of the conservative coalition.
But the ensuing presidential election of 1944 demonstrated the continuing dominance of Roosevelt and the Democrats. Roosevelt defeated Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey by 53.5 percent to 46 percent in the popular vote and by 432 to 99 votes in the electoral college, and Democrats increased their margin in the House (to 242-190) though dropping two more Senate seats (which pared their control there to 56-38). In the election, the chief issue was postwar prosperity and full employment, followed by postwar peace; and on both issues, Roosevelt and the Democrats enjoyed a clear margin in public confidence. Voting patterns changed less between 1940 and 1944 than in any other election in the 1930s and 1940s, with nine of 10 voters voting in 1944 as they had in 1940. The Roosevelt coalition had thus endured the test of new circumstances and issues during the war with relatively modest erosion. In fact, Democrats would remain the majority party for another quarter century, and issues, party images, and voting patterns from the Roosevelt era remained visible in the nation’s politics at the turn of the 21st century.
Further reading: John M. Allswang, The New Deal and American Politics (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978); John W. Jeffries, Testing the Roosevelt Coalition: Connecticut Society and Politics in the Era of World War II (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979); Everett C. Ladd, Jr., with Charles D. Hadley, Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s, 2d rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978); Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 3d rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Clyde P. Weed, The Nemesis of Reform: The Republican Party during the New Deal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
World History
