1936 United States presidential election in Kansas

1936 United States presidential election in Kansas

← 1932 November 3, 1936 1940 →
 
Nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt Alf Landon
Party Democratic Republican
Home state New York Kansas
Running mate John N. Garner Frank Knox
Electoral vote 9 0
Popular vote 464,520 397,727
Percentage 53.67% 45.95%

County Results

President before election

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democratic

Elected President

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democratic

The 1936 United States presidential election in Kansas took place on November 3, 1936 as part of 1936 United States presidential election held in all forty-eight contemporary states. Kansas voters chose nine electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice President.

Kansas had been a powerfully Republican state during the 1920s (as it had been during its first quarter-century of statehood), although it did not possess the isolationist sentiment found in Appalachia or the Upper Midwest.[1] In 1928 large-scale anti-Catholic voting swept a state substantially part of the OzarkBible Belt”, so that whereas Kansas had been less anti-Democratic than more northerly Plains states in 1920 and 1924, it became Herbert Hoover’s best state in the entire nation in 1928.

A major drought affected the Great Plains in the 1930s, producing dramatic swings against incumbent President Hoover in 1932, which were more overwhelming in Kansas than in states further north,[1] though less so than in the traditionally Democratic Southern Plains that had been vehemently against Al Smith’s Catholic faith in 1928.[2] During Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term as President, Kansas twice elected Republican Governor Alfred Mossman Landon, who proved himself a skilled administrator, who was critical of the excesses of the Agricultural Adjustment Act and was the only GOP governor re-elected in 1934.[3] Landon was to have relatively little trouble gaining the Republican nomination against the popular Roosevelt in 1936.

Although some observers thought that Landon could bring back the West and Plains which had completely deserted Herbert Hoover in 1932,[4] Landon could not achieve this to any significant degree. Although he carried more than thirty counties that had supported Roosevelt in 1932, Landon did not make the hoped-for gains there,[5] and any gains he did make were offset by substantial losses in Kansas’ larger cities, where Landon’s later anti-New Deal rhetoric was unpopular.[5] Landon consequently improved on Hoover’s 1932 showing by only 1.71 percentage points even in a state that had known him as governor, although Kansas was Landon’s fourth-best state by vote percentage behind Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire (the first two being the only states in the Union which Landon carried in the Electoral College).[6] This was the penultimate time Kansas voted for a Democratic presidential candidate—the only subsequent Democrat to win the state being Lyndon B. Johnson in his national landslide win in 1964.

As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last occasion the following counties have voted for a Democratic presidential candidate: Chase, Cheyenne, Decatur, Graham, Greenwood, Harper, Kiowa, Lincoln, Marion, Meade, Mitchell, Morris,[a] Rawlins, Rooks, Scott and Seward.[7]

  1. ^ a b Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, pp. 420–426 ISBN 978-0-691-16324-6
  2. ^ Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority; pp. 214, 317, 352
  3. ^ Women in Congress, 1917–2006, p. 118 ISBN 0160767539
  4. ^ Trende, Sean; The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government Is Up for Grabs – and Who Will Take It, p. 14 ISBN 1137000112
  5. ^ a b Savage, Sean J.; Roosevelt: The Party Leader, 1932–1945, p. 126 ISBN 0813157048
  6. ^ "1936 Presidential Election Statistics". Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
  7. ^ Sullivan, Robert David; ‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016


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