Election 1936: FDR vs. Alfred M. Landon

The election of 1936 was the most one-sided election in US history in terms of electoral votes and was the second most lopsided in the popular vote. In the primary, Henry Breckenridge ran against Roosevelt who ran for a second term. Breckenridge was anti-New Deal, but his campaign failed as Roosevelt won with 93% of the vote. On the Republican side, Governor Alf Landon won the primary vote by a landslide, and picked runner-up William Borah as his vice-president.

Alf Landon lead a weak campaign against Roosevelt. He rarely did any campaigning after his nomination, and his attacks on social security were all developed by other republicans. Landon was weak at public speaking and did not speak well on the radio. Landon respected Roosevelt, but felt that the New Deal was too hard on business and involved lots of inefficiency. He became ridiculed for his policies by other Democrats.


Although Roosevelt ended up winning by a landslide, there was an interesting twist to the election. There was a large nationwide Literary Digest poll which had predicted the last 5 elections correctly, and this year it received 2.3 million responses. It predicted that Landon would win by 370 electoral votes. This was because all anti-Roosevelt supporters felt more strongly about the election than the average Roosevelt supporter, thus they were more likely to take the poll seriously.

In the end, Roosevelt won by a landslide, winning 46/48 possible states. He won the popular vote by 60%. Many people thought that this landslide victory for the Democrats was the end for the Republican party.

https://www.270towin.com/1936_Election/
https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/the-1936-election-a-polling-catastrophe/