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1932 United States presidential election in Virginia

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1932 United States presidential election in Virginia
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Main article: 1932 United States presidential election

The 1932 United States presidential election in Virginia took place on November 8, 1932. Voters chose eleven representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

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Like all former Confederate States, early twentieth-century Virginia almost completely disenfranchised its black and poor white populations through the use of a cumulative poll tax and literacy tests.[1] So severe was the disenfranchising effect of the new 1902 Constitution that it has been calculated that a third of the electorate during the first half of the twentieth century comprised state employees and officeholders.[1]

This limited electorate meant Virginian politics was controlled by political machines based in Southside Virginia—the 1920 would see the building of the Byrd Organization which would control the state's politics until the Voting Rights Act. Progressive “antiorganization” factions were rendered impotent by the inability of almost all their potential electorate to vote.[2] Unlike the Deep South, historical fusion with the “Readjuster” Democrats,[3] defection over free silver of substantial proportions of the Northeast-aligned white electorate of the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia,[4] and an early move towards a “lily white” Jim Crow party[3] meant that in general elections the Republicans retained around one-third of the small statewide electorate,[5] with the majority of GOP support located in the western part of the state. However—like in Tennessee during the same era—the parties avoided competition in many areas by an agreed division over local offices.[2]

1928 saw a substantial change, whereby a combination of anti-Catholicism in the Tidewater region and growing middle-class Republicanism in the cities saw Republican Herbert Hoover carry Virginia's electoral votes[6] and elect three Congressmen, including the local district of emerging machine leader Byrd.[7] However, a combination of record drought[8] and the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression meant that the trend towards the GOP would be short-lived.[9] The Depression had extremely severe effects in the South, which had the highest unemployment rate in the nation, and many Southerners blamed this on the North and on Wall Street, rejecting Hoover's claim that the Depression's causes were exogenous.[10]

For some time in 1932, Byrd was seen as a possible compromise candidate between Roosevelt and Al Smith for the Democratic presidential nomination;[11] however, Southern opposition to Smith meant that Byrd ultimately wavered on seeking the nomination and accepted Roosevelt,[12] as even delegates from such states as North Carolina rejected him for FDR.

Neither major party candidate campaigned in the state, and no polls were taken early in the campaign. when the state was finally polled in the middle of October, Roosevelt was clearly leading over Hoover by around five-to-two.[13] A later poll had Roosevelt winning by seventy thousand votes, despite overall being much more favourable to the incumbent president than most other polls.[14] As it turned out, the earlier poll was more accurate, with Roosevelt winning by over one hundred and fourteen thousand votes. Roosevelt ultimately won the national election with 57.41 percent of the vote.

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Results

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Results by county or independent city

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Counties and independent cities that flipped from Republican to Democratic

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Analysis

Although Roosevelt won Virginia by a margin that exceeded Woodrow Wilson’s two victories in the state and was the best Democratic performance since Andrew Jackson exactly a century previously, Hoover—despite losing every county except Floyd—was still able to maintain a small portion of the urban and Tidewater gains gains made by the Republicans during the 1920s.[6] In some counties of the Virginia Peninsula and Middle Peninsula, the incumbent president bettered Calvin Coolidge’s 1924 performance even in a depression year.

As of the 2024 presidential election, this is the last election in which Carroll County, Highland County, and Shenandoah County voted for a Democratic presidential candidate.[17] This is the closest anyone has come to sweeping every Virginia county since 1820.

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References

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