1928 United States presidential election

For related races, see 1928 United States elections.

1928 United States presidential election

November 6, 1928
531 members of the Electoral College 266 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	56.9% 8.0 pp
Nominee Herbert Hoover Al Smith Party Republican Democratic Home state California New York Running mate Charles Curtis Joseph T. Robinson Electoral vote 444 87 States carried 40 8 Popular vote 21,427,123 15,015,464 Percentage 58.2% 40.8%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Hoover/Curtis, blue denotes those won by Smith/Robinson. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election Calvin Coolidge Republican Elected President Herbert Hoover Republican

The 1928 United States presidential election was the 36th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1928. Republican Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover defeated the Democratic nominee, Governor Al Smith of New York. Hoover was the last Republican to win a presidential election until 1952.

After President Calvin Coolidge declined to seek reelection, Hoover emerged as his party's front-runner. As Hoover's intra-party opponents failed to unite around a candidate, Hoover received a large majority of the vote at the 1928 Republican National Convention. The strong state of the economy discouraged some Democrats from running, and Smith was nominated on the first ballot of the 1928 Democratic National Convention. Hoover and Smith had been widely known as potential presidential candidates long before the 1928 campaign, and both were generally regarded as outstanding leaders. Each candidate was a newcomer to the presidential race and presented in his person and record an appeal of unknown potency to the electorate. Each candidate also faced serious discontent within his party membership, and neither had the wholehearted support of his party organization.

In the end, the Republicans were identified with the booming economy of the 1920s, whereas Smith, a Roman Catholic, suffered politically from anti-Catholic prejudice, his anti-prohibitionist stance, and his association with the legacy of corruption of Tammany Hall. Hoover won a third straight Republican landslide and made substantial inroads in the traditionally Democratic Solid South, winning several states that had not voted for a Republican since the end of Reconstruction. Hoover's victory made him the first president born west of the Mississippi River, and he is the most recent sitting member of the Cabinet to win a major party's presidential nomination.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

Main article: 1928 Republican National Convention

Republican Party Ticket, 1928
Herbert Hoover	Charles Curtis
for President	for Vice President
3rd U.S. Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)	U.S. Senator from Kansas (1907–1913 & 1915–1929)
Campaign

Republican candidates:

• 
  Herbert Hoover from California,
  Secretary of Commerce
• 
  Former Governor Frank Orren Lowden of Illinois
• 
  Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis from Kansas

With President Coolidge choosing not to enter the race, the race for the nomination was wide open. The leading candidates were Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, former Illinois Governor Frank Orren Lowden and Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis. A draft-Coolidge movement failed to gain traction with party insiders and failed to persuade Coolidge himself.

In the few primaries that mattered, Hoover did not perform as well as expected, and it was thought that the president or Vice-President Charles G. Dawes might accept a draft in case of a deadlock, but Lowden withdrew just as the convention was about to start, paving the way for a Hoover victory.

The Republican Convention, held in Kansas City, Missouri, from June 12 to 15, nominated Hoover on the first ballot. With Hoover disinclined to interfere in the selection of his running mate, the party leaders were at first partial to giving Dawes a shot at a second term, but when this information leaked, Coolidge sent an angry telegram saying that he would consider a second nomination for Dawes, whom he hated, a "personal affront." To attract votes from farmers concerned about Hoover's pro-business orientation, it was instead offered to Senator Curtis, who accepted. He was nominated overwhelmingly on the first ballot.

In his acceptance speech eight weeks after the convention ended, Secretary Hoover said: "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of this land... We shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this land." The phrase would eventually haunt Hoover during the Great Depression.

The Balloting

Presidential Ballot		Vice Presidential Ballot
Herbert Hoover	837	Charles Curtis	1,052
Frank Orren Lowden	74	Herman Ekern	19
Charles Curtis	64	Charles G. Dawes	13
James Eli Watson	45	Hanford MacNider	2
George W. Norris	24
Guy D. Goff	18
Calvin Coolidge	17
Charles G. Dawes	4
Charles Evans Hughes	1

Democratic Party nomination

Main article: 1928 Democratic National Convention

Democratic Party Ticket, 1928
Al Smith	Joseph T. Robinson
for President	for Vice President
42nd Governor of New York (1919–1920 & 1923–1928)	U.S. Senator from Arkansas (1913–1937)
Campaign

Democratic candidates:

• 
  Governor Al Smith of New York
• 
  Representative Cordell Hull of Tennessee
• 
  Senator James A. Reed of Missouri
• 
  Former Senator Atlee Pomerene of Ohio

With the memory of the Teapot Dome scandal rapidly fading, and the current state of prosperity making the party's prospects look dim, most of the major Democratic leaders, such as William Gibbs McAdoo, were content to sit this one out. One who did not was New York Governor Al Smith, who had tried twice before to secure the Democratic nomination.

The 1928 Democratic National Convention was held in Houston, Texas, on June 26 to 28, and Smith became the candidate on the first ballot.

The leadership asked the delegates to nominate Sen. Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, who was in many ways Smith's political polar opposite, to be his running mate, and he was nominated for vice-president.

Smith was the first Roman Catholic to gain a major party's nomination for president, and his religion became an issue during the campaign. Many Protestants feared that Smith would take orders from church leaders in Rome in making decisions affecting the country.

The Balloting

Presidential Ballot		Vice Presidential Ballot
Al Smith	849.17	Joseph Taylor Robinson	1,035.17
Cordell Hull	71.84	Alben W. Barkley	77
Walter F. George	52.5	Nellie Tayloe Ross	31
James A. Reed	52	Henry Tureman Allen	28
Atlee Pomerene	47	George L. Berry	17.5
Jesse H. Jones	43	Dan Moody	9.33
Evans Woollen	32	Duncan U. Fletcher	7
Pat Harrison	20	John H. Taylor	6
William A. Ayres	20	Lewis Stevenson	4
Richard C. Watts	18	Evans Woollen	2
Gilbert Hitchcock	16	Joseph Patrick Tumulty	100
A. Victor Donahey	5
Houston Thompson	2
Theodore G. Bilbo	1

Prohibition Party nomination

The Prohibition Party Convention was held in Chicago from July 10 through July 12. Smith openly opposed Prohibition. Some members of the Prohibition Party wanted to throw their support to Hoover, thinking that their candidate would not win and that they did not want their candidate to provide the margin by which Smith would win. Nonetheless, William F. Varney was nominated for president over Hoover by a margin of 68–45.

General election

The fall campaign

Anti-Catholicism was a significant problem for Smith's campaign. Protestant ministers warned that he would take orders from the pope who, many Americans sincerely believed, would move to the United States to rule the country from a fortress in Washington, D.C., if Smith won. According to a popular joke, after the election he sent a one-word telegram advising Pope Pius XI to "Unpack". Beyond the conspiracy theories, a survey of 8,500 Southern Methodist Church ministers found only four who supported Smith, and the northern Methodists, Southern Baptists, and Disciples of Christ were similar in their opposition. Many voters who sincerely rejected bigotry and the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan—which had declined during the 1920s until the 1928 campaign revived it—justified their opposition to Smith on their belief that the Catholic Church was an "un-American", "alien culture" that opposed freedom and democracy.

An example was a statement issued in September 1928 by the National Lutheran Editors' and Managers' Association that opposed Smith's election. The manifesto, written by Dr. Clarence Reinhold Tappert, warned about "the peculiar relation in which a faithful Catholic stands and the absolute allegiance he owes to a 'foreign sovereign' who does not only 'claim' supremacy also in secular affairs as a matter of principle and theory but who, time and again, has endeavored to put this claim into practical operation." The Catholic Church, the manifesto asserted, was hostile to American principles of separation of church and state and of religious toleration. Groups circulated a million copies of a counterfeit oath claiming that fourth degree Knights of Columbus members swore to exterminate Freemasons and Protestants and commit violence against anyone, if the church so ordered. Smith's opposition to Prohibition, a key reform promoted by Protestants, also lost him votes, as did his association with Tammany Hall. Because many anti-Catholics used these issues as a cover for their religious prejudices, Smith's campaign had difficulty denouncing anti-Catholicism as bigotry without offending others who favored Prohibition or disliked Tammany's corruption.

Due to these issues, Smith lost several states of the Solid South that had been carried by Democrats since Reconstruction. However, in many southern states with sizable African American populations (and where the vast majority of African Americans could not vote at the time), many believed that Hoover supported integration, or at least was not committed to maintaining segregation, which in turn overcame opposition to Smith's campaign. During the campaign, Mississippi Governor Theodore G. Bilbo claimed that Hoover had met with a black member of the Republican National Committee and danced with her. Hoover's campaign quickly denied the "untruthful and ignoble assertion".

Smith's religion helped him with Roman Catholic New England immigrants (especially Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans), which may explain his narrow victories in traditionally Republican Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as well as his narrow loss in his home state of New York, where previous Democratic presidential candidates lost by double digits, but which Smith only lost by two percent.

Results

Results by county explicitly indicating the margin of victory for the winning candidate. Shades of red are for Hoover (Republican) and shades of blue are for Smith (Democratic), and shades of green are for "Other(s)" (Non-Democratic/Non-Republican), grey indicates zero recorded votes and white indicates territories not elevated to statehood.

The total vote exceeded that of 1924 by nearly eight million. It was nearly twice the vote cast in 1916 and nearly three times that of 1896. Every section in the Union increased its vote, the Mountain, East South Central and West South Central sections least of all. The greatest increases were in the heavily populated (Northeastern) Mid-Atlantic and East North Central sections, where more than 4,250,000 more votes were cast, more than half of the nationwide increase. There was an increase of over a million each in New York and Pennsylvania.

Hoover won the election by a wide margin on pledges to continue the economic boom of the Coolidge years. He received more votes than any candidate of the Republican Party previously had in every state except five: Rhode Island, Iowa, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The Hoover vote was greater than the Coolidge vote in 2,932 counties; it was less in 143 of the comparable counties. The 21,400,000 votes cast for Hoover also touched the high-water mark for all votes for a presidential candidate up to that time and were an increase of more than 5,500,000 over the Coolidge vote four years earlier. The Republican ticket made substantial inroads in the South: the heaviest Democratic losses were in the three Southern sections (South Atlantic, East South Central, West South Central). These losses included 215 counties that had never before supported a Republican presidential candidate, distributed as follows: Alabama (14), Arkansas (5), Florida (22), Georgia (4), Kentucky (28), Maryland (3), Mississippi (1), Missouri (10), North Carolina (16), Tennessee (3), Texas (64), Virginia (26), West Virginia (4). In Georgia, eight counties recorded more votes cast for "anti-Smith" electors than either of the two-party candidates, while one county in Wyoming had no recorded votes.

The electoral votes of North Carolina and Virginia had not been awarded to a Republican since 1872, while Florida had not been carried by a Republican since the heavily disputed election of 1876. Texas was carried by a Republican for the first time in its history, leaving Georgia as the only remaining state never carried by a Republican presidential candidate. Georgia was eventually won by Barry Goldwater in 1964. In all, Smith carried only six of the eleven states of the former Confederacy, the lowest number carried by a Democratic candidate since the end of Reconstruction.

Smith polled more votes than any previous Democratic candidate in thirty of the 48 states, all but Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. In only four of these (Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico) did Smith receive fewer votes than Davis had in 1924.

Smith received nearly as many votes as Coolidge had in 1924, and his vote exceeded Davis's by more than six and half million. The Democratic vote was greater than in 1924 in 2,080 counties; it fell off in 997 counties. In only one section did the Democratic vote drop below 38%, and that was the Pacific section, the only one in which the Republican percentage exceeded 60%. But the Democrats made gains in five sections. Of these counties, fourteen had never been Democratic and seven had been Democratic only once. The size and the nature of the distribution of the Democratic vote illustrates Smith's strengths and weaknesses as a candidate. Despite evidence of an increased Democratic vote, Smith's overwhelming defeat in the electoral college and the retention of so few Democratic counties reflected Hoover's greater appeal. Smith won the electoral votes of only the Deep Southern States of the Democratic Solid South (plus Robinson's home state of Arkansas) and the New England states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which had a large proportion of Catholic voters. His 87 electoral votes were the fewest a Democratic candidate had won since the 80 votes earned by Horatio Seymour in 1868 (not counting Horace Greeley in 1872, who was endorsed by the Democratic Party, but ran as a Liberal Republican). Hoover even triumphed by a narrow margin in Smith's home state of New York. Smith carried 914 counties, the fewest in the Fourth Party System. The Republican total leaped to 2,174 counties, a greater number than in the great overturn of 1920.

Third-party support sank almost to the vanishing point, as the election of 1928 proved to be a two-party contest to a greater extent than any other in the Fourth Party System. Until the major split before the 1948 election in the Democratic Party between Southern Democrats and the more liberal Northern faction, no further significant third-party candidacies as seen in 1912 and 1924 were to occur. All "other" votes totaled only 1.08 percent of the national popular vote. The Socialist vote sank to 267,478, and in seven states there were no Socialist votes.

This was the last election in which the Republicans won North Carolina until 1968, the last when they won Kentucky and West Virginia until 1956, the last when they won Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington until 1952, the last when they won Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Oregon until 1948, the last when they won Ohio, Wisconsin, and Wyoming until 1944, and the last when they won Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota until 1940. As of 2016 it remains the last election when the Republican candidate carried the three contiguous counties of Saint Louis County, Minnesota, Carlton County, Minnesota and Douglas County, Wisconsin, and the last until Donald Trump in 2016 when the Republicans carried neighboring Itasca County, Minnesota, Columbia County, Oregon or Grays Harbor County, Washington. It is also the last occasion when Wayne County, Michigan supported a Republican candidate and the only occasion since 1908 when Republicans have carried Orange County, North Carolina.

Electoral results

Presidential candidate	Party	Home state	Popular vote		Electoral vote	Running mate
			Count	Percentage		Vice-presidential candidate	Home state	Electoral vote
Herbert C. Hoover	Republican	California	21,427,123	58.21%	444	Charles Curtis	Kansas	444
Alfred E. Smith	Democratic	New York	15,015,464	40.80%	87	Joseph T. Robinson	Arkansas	87
Norman M. Thomas	Socialist	New York	267,478	0.73%	0	James H. Maurer	Pennsylvania	0
William Z. Foster	Communist	Massachusetts	48,551	0.13%	0	Benjamin Gitlow	New York	0
Verne L. Reynolds	Socialist Labor	Michigan	21,590	0.06%	0	Jeremiah D. Crowley	New York	0
William F. Varney	Prohibition	New York	20,095	0.05%	0	James Edgerton	Virginia	0
Frank Webb	Farmer-Labor	California	6,390	0.02%	0	LeRoy R. Tillman	Georgia	0
Other			321	0.00%	—	Other		—
Total			36,807,012	100%	531			531
Needed to win					266			266

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. "1928 Presidential Election Results". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved July 28, 2005.

Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved July 28, 2005.

Popular vote Hoover   58.21% Smith   40.80% Thomas   0.73% Others   0.26%

Electoral vote Hoover   83.62% Smith   16.38%

Geography of results

• 
  Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

Cartographic gallery

• 
  Map of presidential election results by county
• 
  Map of Republican presidential election results by county
• 
  Map of Democratic presidential election results by county
• 
  Map of "other" presidential election results by county
• 
  Cartogram of presidential election results by county
• 
  Cartogram of Republican presidential election results by county
• 
  Cartogram of Democratic presidential election results by county
• 
  Cartogram of "other" presidential election results by county

Results by state

States won by Hoover/Curtis

States won by Smith/Robinson

		Herbert Hoover Republican			Alfred E. Smith Democratic			Norman Thomas Socialist			William Foster Communist			Verne Reynolds Socialist Labor			Margin		State Total
State	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	#
Alabama	12	120,725	48.49	-	127,797	51.33	12	460	0.18	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-7,072	-2.84	248,982	AL
Arizona	3	52,533	57.57	3	38,537	42.23	-	-	-	-	184	0.20	-	-	-	-	13,996	15.34	91,254	AZ
Arkansas	9	77,751	39.33	-	119,196	60.29	9	429	0.22	-	317	0.16	-	-	-	-	-41,445	-20.96	197,693	AR
California	13	1,162,323	64.69	13	614,365	34.19	-	19,595	1.09	-	112	0.01	-	-	-	-	547,958	30.50	1,796,656	CA
Colorado	6	253,872	64.72	6	133,131	33.94	-	3,472	0.89	-	675	0.17	-	-	-	-	120,741	30.78	392,242	CO
Connecticut	7	296,614	53.63	7	252,040	45.57	-	3,019	0.55	-	730	0.13	-	622	0.11	-	44,574	8.06	553,031	CT
Delaware	3	68,860	65.03	3	36,643	34.60	-	329	0.31	-	59	0.06	-	-	-	-	32,217	30.42	105,891	DE
Florida	6	144,168	56.83	6	101,764	40.12	-	4,036	1.59	-	3,704	1.46	-	-	-	-	42,404	16.72	253,672	FL
Georgia	14	99,369	43.36	-	129,602	56.56	14	124	0.05	-	64	0.03	-	-	-	-	-30,233	-13.19	229,159	GA
Idaho	4	97,322	64.22	4	52,926	34.93	-	1,293	0.85	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	44,396	29.30	151,541	ID
Illinois	29	1,769,141	56.93	29	1,313,817	42.28	-	19,138	0.62	-	3,581	0.12	-	1,812	0.06	-	455,324	14.65	3,107,489	IL
Indiana	15	848,290	59.68	15	562,691	39.59	-	3,871	0.27	-	321	0.02	-	645	0.05	-	285,599	20.09	1,421,314	IN
Iowa	13	623,570	61.77	13	379,311	37.57	-	2,960	0.29	-	328	0.03	-	230	0.02	-	244,259	24.20	1,009,489	IA
Kansas	10	513,672	72.02	10	193,003	27.06	-	6,205	0.87	-	320	0.04	-	-	-	-	320,669	44.96	713,200	KS
Kentucky	13	558,064	59.33	13	381,070	40.51	-	837	0.09	-	293	0.03	-	340	0.04	-	176,994	18.82	940,604	KY
Louisiana	10	51,160	23.70	-	164,655	76.29	10	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-113,495	-52.58	215,833	LA
Maine	6	179,923	68.63	6	81,179	30.96	-	1,068	0.41	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	98,744	37.66	262,171	ME
Maryland	8	301,479	57.06	8	223,626	42.33	-	1,701	0.32	-	636	0.12	-	906	0.17	-	77,853	14.74	528,348	MD
Massachusetts	18	775,566	49.15	-	792,758	50.24	18	6,262	0.40	-	2,461	0.16	-	772	0.05	-	-17,192	-1.09	1,577,823	MA
Michigan	15	965,396	70.36	15	396,762	28.92	-	3,516	0.26	-	2,881	0.21	-	799	0.06	-	568,634	41.44	1,372,082	MI
Minnesota	12	560,977	57.77	12	396,451	40.83	-	6,774	0.70	-	4,853	0.50	-	1,921	0.20	-	164,526	16.94	970,976	MN
Mississippi	10	27,153	17.90	-	124,539	82.10	10	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-97,386	-64.20	151,692	MS
Missouri	18	834,080	55.58	18	662,562	44.15	-	3,739	0.25	-	-	-	-	340	0.02	-	171,518	11.43	1,500,721	MO
Montana	4	113,300	58.37	4	78,578	40.48	-	1,667	0.86	-	563	0.29	-	-	-	-	34,722	17.89	194,108	MT
Nebraska	8	345,745	63.19	8	197,959	36.18	-	3,434	0.63	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	147,786	27.01	547,144	NE
Nevada	3	18,327	56.54	3	14,090	43.46	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	4,237	13.07	32,417	NV
New Hampshire	4	115,404	58.65	4	80,715	41.02	-	465	0.24	-	173	0.09	-	-	-	-	34,689	17.63	196,757	NH
New Jersey	14	925,285	59.77	14	616,162	39.80	-	4,866	0.31	-	1,240	0.08	-	488	0.03	-	309,123	19.97	1,548,195	NJ
New Mexico	3	69,645	59.01	3	48,211	40.85	-	-	-	-	158	0.13	-	-	-	-	21,434	18.16	118,014	NM
New York	45	2,193,344	49.79	45	2,089,863	47.44	-	107,332	2.44	-	10,876	0.25	-	4,211	0.10	-	103,481	2.35	4,405,626	NY
North Carolina	12	348,923	54.94	12	286,227	45.06	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	62,696	9.87	635,150	NC
North Dakota	5	131,441	54.80	5	106,648	44.46	-	936	0.39	-	842	0.35	-	-	-	-	24,793	10.34	239,867	ND
Ohio	24	1,627,546	64.89	24	864,210	34.45	-	8,683	0.35	-	2,836	0.11	-	1,515	0.06	-	763,336	30.43	2,508,346	OH
Oklahoma	10	394,046	63.72	10	219,174	35.44	-	3,924	0.63	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	174,872	28.28	618,427	OK
Oregon	5	205,341	64.18	5	109,223	34.14	-	2,720	0.85	-	1,094	0.34	-	1,564	0.49	-	96,118	30.04	319,942	OR
Pennsylvania	38	2,055,382	65.24	38	1,067,586	33.89	-	18,647	0.59	-	4,726	0.15	-	380	0.01	-	987,796	31.35	3,150,610	PA
Rhode Island	5	117,522	49.55	-	118,973	50.16	5	-	-	-	283	0.12	-	416	0.18	-	-1,451	-0.61	237,194	RI
South Carolina	9	5,858	8.54	-	62,700	91.39	9	47	0.07	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-56,842	-82.85	68,605	SC
South Dakota	5	157,603	60.18	5	102,660	39.20	-	443	0.17	-	232	0.09	-	-	-	-	54,943	20.98	261,865	SD
Tennessee	12	195,388	53.76	12	167,343	46.04	-	631	0.17	-	111	0.03	-	-	-	-	28,045	7.72	363,473	TN
Texas	20	367,036	51.77	20	341,032	48.10	-	722	0.10	-	209	0.03	-	-	-	-	26,004	3.67	708,999	TX
Utah	4	94,618	53.58	4	80,985	45.86	-	954	0.54	-	46	0.03	-	-	-	-	13,633	7.72	176,603	UT
Vermont	4	90,404	66.87	4	44,440	32.87	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	45,964	34.00	135,191	VT
Virginia	12	164,609	53.91	12	140,146	45.90	-	250	0.08	-	173	0.06	-	180	0.06	-	24,463	8.01	305,358	VA
Washington	7	335,844	67.06	7	156,772	31.30	-	2,615	0.52	-	1,541	0.31	-	4,068	0.81	-	179,072	35.75	500,840	WA
West Virginia	8	375,551	58.43	8	263,784	41.04	-	1,313	0.20	-	401	0.06	-	-	-	-	111,767	17.39	642,752	WV
Wisconsin	13	544,205	53.52	13	450,259	44.28	-	18,213	1.79	-	1,528	0.15	-	381	0.04	-	93,946	9.24	1,016,831	WI
Wyoming	3	52,748	63.68	3	29,299	35.37	-	788	0.95	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	23,449	28.31	82,835	WY
TOTALS:	531	21,427,123	58.21	444	15,015,464	40.80	87	267,478	0.73	-	48,551	0.13	-	21,590	0.06	-	6,411,659	17.42	36,807,012	US

Close states

Margin of victory less than 1% (5 electoral votes):

1. Rhode Island, 0.61%

Margin of victory less than 5% (95 electoral votes):

1. Massachusetts, 1.09%
2. New York, 2.35%
3. Alabama, 2.84%
4. Texas, 3.67%

Margin of victory between 5% and 10% (60 electoral votes):

1. Utah, 7.72%
2. Tennessee, 7.72%
3. Virginia, 8.01%
4. Connecticut, 8.06%
5. Wisconsin, 9.24%
6. North Carolina, 9.87%

Statistics

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Republican)

1. Jackson County, Kentucky 96.52%
2. Leslie County, Kentucky 94.51%
3. Alpine County, California 94.23%
4. Johnson County, Tennessee 93.74%
5. Sevier County, Tennessee 92.57%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Democratic)

1. Jackson Parish, Louisiana 100.00%
2. Armstrong County, South Dakota 100.00%
3. Humphreys County, Mississippi 99.90%
4. Edgefield County, South Carolina 99.67%
5. Bamberg County, South Carolina 99.49%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Other)

1. Alachua County, Florida 62.63%
2. Appling County, Georgia 58.25%
3. Long County, Georgia 57.32%
4. Decatur County, Georgia 46.03%
5. Jefferson County, Georgia 43.67%

See also

• History of the United States (1918–1945)
• Inauguration of Herbert Hoover
• 1928 United States House of Representatives elections
• 1928 United States Senate elections
• Al Smith 1928 presidential campaign

Further reading

Further information: 1920 United States elections § Further reading

• Andersen, Kristi. The Creation of a Democratic Majority: 1928-1936. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)
• Bornet, Vaughn Davis. "The Communist Party in the Presidential Election of 1928," Western Political Quarterly, (1958), 11#3 pp. 514–538. In JSTOR
• Bornet, Vaughn Davis. 'Labor Politics in a Democratic Republic: Moderation, Division, and Disruption in the Presidential Election of 1928 (1964)
• Chiles, Robert. 2018. The Revolution of '28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal. Cornell University Press.
• Coffman, Elesha. "The 'Religious Issue' in Presidential Politics." American Catholic Studies (2008) 119#4 pp 1-20
• Craig, Douglas B. After Wilson: The Struggle for Control of the Democratic Party, 1920-1934. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993)
• Doherty, Herbert J. "Florida and the Presidential Election of 1928." The Florida Historical Quarterly 26.2 (1947): 174-186.
• Goldberg, David Joseph. Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)
• Hostetler, Michael J. "Gov. Al Smith Confronts the Catholic Question: The Rhetorical Legacy of the 1928 Campaign" Communication Quarterly, Vol. 46, 1998.
• Lichtman, Allan, Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979.
• Moore, Edmund A. A Catholic Runs for President: The Campaign of 1928. Ronald Press, 1956.
• Rulli, Daniel F. "Campaigning in 1928: Chickens in Pots and Cars in Backyards," Teaching History: A Journal of Methods, Vol. 31, no. 1 (2006), pp. 42+
• Slayton, Robert A. Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith. New York: Free Press, 2001.
• Sweeney, James R. "Rum, Romanism, and Virginia Democrats: The Party Leaders and the Campaign of 1928." Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 90 (1982): 403–31. in JSTOR

Primary sources

• Hoover, Herbert. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920-1933 (1952),
• Smith, Alfred E. Campaign Addresses 1929.

External links

• United States presidential election of 1928 at the Encyclopædia Britannica
• 1928 popular vote by counties
• How close was the 1928 election? — Michael Sheppard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Election of 1928 in Counting the Votes