1928 United States presidential election in Massachusetts

1928 United States presidential election in Massachusetts

← 1924 November 6, 1928 1932 →
Turnout	74.0%[1] 17.4 pp
Nominee Al Smith Herbert Hoover Party Democratic Republican Home state New York California Running mate Joseph T. Robinson Charles Curtis Electoral vote 18 0 Popular vote 792,758 775,566 Percentage 50.24% 49.15%
County Results Smith   40-50%   50–60%   60–70% Hoover   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%
President before election Calvin Coolidge Republican Elected President Herbert Hoover Republican

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v t e

The 1928 United States presidential election in Massachusetts took place on November 6, 1928, as part of the 1928 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all contemporary 48 states. Voters chose 18 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Massachusetts voted for the Democratic nominee, Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, over the Republican nominee, former Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover of California. Smith's running mate was Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, while Hoover's running mate was Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis of Kansas.

Smith carried the state with 50.24% of the vote to Hoover's 49.15%, a Democratic victory margin of 1.09%. Socialist candidate Norman Thomas came in a distant third, with 0.40%. Massachusetts had long been a typical Yankee Republican bastion in the wake of the Civil War, voting Republican in every election from 1856, the first the Republican Party contested as such, through 1924, except in 1912, when former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt had run as a Progressive candidate against incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft, splitting the Republican vote and allowing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win Massachusetts with a plurality of only 35.53% of the vote. As such, Hoover became the first Republican to win the presidency without carrying Massachusetts. This also marked the first time that the state would back a losing Democrat in a presidential election.

In 1920 and 1924, Republicans Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge (the latter of whom had been governor of the state) had carried Massachusetts by landslide margins, sweeping every county in the state, including back-to-back GOP victories in the traditionally Democratic-leaning city of Boston. In 1924, Democrat John W. Davis of border state West Virginia had won only 24.86% of the vote in Massachusetts.

However, in 1928, the Democratic Party nominated Alfred E. Smith, a New York City-born Roman Catholic of Irish, Italian, and German immigrant heritage, who appealed greatly to the urban ethnic and Catholic immigrant populations that populated great American cities like New York and Boston.^[2] Smith was the first Catholic ever to be nominated for president on a major party presidential ticket, and while Smith's Catholicism greatly weakened his candidacy in many rural parts of the United States, especially in the South and the Pacific Northwest,^[3] Catholics across the United States identified with him greatly. Thus in 1928, a coalition of Irish Catholic and other ethnic immigrant voters primarily based in urban areas turned out massively in Smith's favor,^[4] making Massachusetts and neighboring Rhode Island the only states outside of the Solid South to vote Democratic. Smith won these two traditional Republican bastions even as Herbert Hoover won a third consecutive Republican landslide nationally.