1936 United States presidential election in Minnesota

1936 United States presidential election in Minnesota

← 1932 November 3, 1936 1940 →
 
Nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt Alf Landon William Lemke
Party Democratic Republican Union
Home state New York Kansas North Dakota
Running mate John Nance Garner Frank Knox Thomas C. O'Brien
Electoral vote 11 0 0
Popular vote 698,811 350,461 74,296
Percentage 61.84% 31.01% 6.58%

County Results

President before election

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democratic

Elected President

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democratic

The 1936 United States presidential election in Minnesota took place on November 3, 1936, as part of the 1936 United States presidential election. Voters chose 11 electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Minnesota was won by the Democratic candidate, incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt won the state over Kansas governor Alf Landon by a margin of 348,350 votes, or 30.83%—nearly doubling Landon's overall share of the state's vote. Nationally, Roosevelt was soundly re-elected, with 523 electoral votes and a landslide 24.26% lead over Landon in the popular vote. Landon carried only two states: Maine and Vermont, whilst in Minnesota Landon won just three counties: Otter Tail County in the rural west, Carver County outside the Twin Cities, and Fillmore County in the southeast of the state; of these, only Fillmore has ever voted Democratic in a presidential election since.[1]

Only five presidential nominees have ever won a greater percentage of the vote in Minnesota than Roosevelt did in 1936: Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 (74%), Warren G. Harding in 1920 (70.6%), Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 (63.8%), Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (63.5%), and James A. Garfield in 1880 (62.3%)—every one of them going on to win the election nationally. As of the 2020 election, this is the last election in which either major party candidate exceeded 80% of the vote in any Minnesota county, with Roosevelt doing so in Lake County (ironically, the only county in the state that Roosevelt did not win in 1932, due to a strong showing by Socialist Norman Thomas).

Roosevelt’s 30.8% margin of victory over Landon remains the widest margin by which any Democrat has ever carried Minnesota in a presidential election.

  1. ^ 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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