Week 12
US Elections were held on November 8, 1932, during the Great Depression. The presidential election coincided with U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and gubernatorial elections in several states. The election is widely considered to be a realigning election. The Democratic Party swept control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, ending 72 years of Republican dominance of the country that lasted since 1860 and Lincoln's presidency. Democratic New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican incumbent president Herbert Hoover in a landslide, with Hoover winning only six Northeastern states. Roosevelt's victory was the first by a Democratic candidate since Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916. In addition to Hoover's defeat, the Republicans also suffered crushing defeats in both congressional chambers: they lost 101 seats in the House of Representatives, with the Democrats expanding their House majority to a supermajority, and also lost twelve seats in the Senate, with Democrats winning control of the chamber for the first time since 1918. This would be the last time that an incumbent president lost re-election and his party lost control of both chambers of Congress in a single term until 2020.
While the new government of Franklin Roosevelt faced an American economic crisis, in Europe and the Pacific the United States faced a growing military threat from a newly rearmed Germany and Japan on the march in China and the surrounding region. From 1932 to 1939, the Roosevelt administration did not want to be distracted from its New Deal by international affairs.
RECOMMENDED READING
Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States),
Oxford University Press,
ISBN 978-0195144031
RECOMMENDED READING
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
Vintage,
ISBN 978-0307277947
