1932 United States presidential election
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Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 1932. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Republican ticket of incumbent President Herbert Hoover and incumbent Vice President Charles Curtis were defeated in a landslide by the Democratic ticket of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York and John Nance Garner, the Speaker of the House. This realigning election marked the effective end of the Fourth Party System, which had been dominated by Republicans, and the beginning of an era of Democratic dominance under the New Deal coalition. Despite disastrous economic conditions due to the Great Depression, Hoover faced little opposition at the 1932 Republican National Convention. Roosevelt was widely considered the front-runner at the start of the 1932 Democratic National Convention, but was not able to clinch the nomination until the fourth ballot of the convention. The Democratic convention chose a leading Southern Democrat, Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas, as the party's vice presidential nominee. Roosevelt united the party, campaigning on the failures of the Hoover administration. He promised recovery with a "New Deal" for the American people. Roosevelt won by a landslide in both the electoral college and popular vote, carrying every state outside of the Northeast and receiving the highest percentage of the popular vote of any Democratic nominee up to that time. Hoover had won over 58% of the popular vote in the 1928 presidential election, but his share of the popular vote declined to 39.6% in 1932. Socialist Party nominee Norman Thomas won 2.2% of the popular vote. Subsequent Democratic landslides in the 1934 midterm elections and the 1936 presidential election confirmed the commencement of the Fifth Party System, which was dominated by Roosevelt's New Deal Coalition. Roosevelt's election ended the era of Republican dominance in presidential politics that had lasted since the beginning of the Civil War and the election of 1860. Roosevelt was the first Democrat to be elected president since 1916, the first to win an outright majority of the popular vote since 1876, and the first to win a majority of both the electoral and popular vote since 1852. Hoover was the only incumbent president to lose an election between 1912 and 1976, and the only elected incumbent to do so between 1912 and 1980.