Via the NYT, a nice graph of presidential victory margins, with the electoral college going up the y axis and the popular vote going out the x axis. Note the circled data point.
The 1936 presidential election was cast by campaigners as a referendum on Roosevelt’s economic policies—particularly by the GOP and the Liberty League (created for the purpose), who urged Americans to vote Republican and stand with the Supreme Court against the New Deal. They lost, apparently because enough voters thought they were better off with the New Deal than without it. Larry Bartels notes that this was true in the crassest sense—states with “robust income growth” provided especially strong support, which may have meant the election was simply about improvements in economic performance.
The Edge of the American West 
16 comments
November 8, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Ben Alpers
Obviously voters in 1936 didn’t understand that a 12% drop in the unemployment rate wasn’t a significant solution to anything, especially with all those make-work government jobs. Too bad they didn’t have Amity Shlaes to clear things up for them!
November 8, 2008 at 6:49 pm
tf smith
The GI Generation (and their parents) were obviously a bunch of damn socialists!
November 8, 2008 at 7:21 pm
AWC
Even the Schechter Brothers voted for Roosevelt that year.
November 8, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Malaclypse
If only Megan McArdle could have explained to them how bad FDR really was. Lord only knows, she would have pulled herself up by her bootstraps, using her talent for, um, well, that thing she can do.
November 8, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Malaclypse
Could we also highlight the 2000 Bush result, just out of spite? It seems an appropriate contrast.
November 8, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Ahistoricality
Nixon has to win the prize for greatest distance between elections….
November 8, 2008 at 8:33 pm
kid bitzer
well, this just fits into the new right-wing line, which is that elections mean nothing because hitler was elected too, dontcha know.
no, i’m not kidding. i really read that this a.m. in a comment thread.
ergo, fdr’s election success, like obama’s, just shows that he’s hitler.
November 8, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Tiny Hermaphrodite
The funny thing of course is that Hitler wasn’t elected.
November 8, 2008 at 10:18 pm
andrew
Wow, so Harding got the highest ever popular vote percentage. I knew he won big, but I didn’t realize it was that big, probably because the electoral tally wasn’t actually that great. Oh, and that whole failure of an administration thing.
Interesting that +20 to +40 and +40 to +60 in the electoral vote have so few instances comparatively. Wonder if it’s an effect of big states causing big swings in the numbers between close elections and landslides (or near-landslides).
November 8, 2008 at 10:23 pm
shadowcook
Eric pointed out tonight that the margin of victory is not the same thing as the winnning percentage of the popular vote. So, Harding may have won by the greatest margin, but not necessarily the greatest percentage of the popular vote. At least, I think that’s what he meant…
November 9, 2008 at 12:10 am
Colin
WGH got 60%, attributable to his hotness and being the first black president.
November 9, 2008 at 3:28 pm
david
None of this explains why the Great Depression was worse in the United States than just about anywhere else in the world.
November 10, 2008 at 8:31 am
Blackadder
Here is another quote from Bartels:
In the United States, voters replaced Republicans with Democrats in 1932 and the economy improved. In Britain and Australia, voters replaced Labor governments with conservatives and the economy improved.
In Sweden, voters replaced Conservatives with Liberals, then with Social Democrats, and the economy improved. In the Canadian agricultural province of Saskatchewan, voters replaced Conservatives with Socialists and the economy improved. In the adjacent agricultural province of Alberta, voters replaced a socialist party with a right-leaning party created from scratch by a charismatic radio preacher peddling a flighty share- the- wealth scheme, and the economy improved. In Weimar Germany, where economic distress was deeper and longer lasting, voters rejected all of the mainstream parties, the Nazis seized power, and the economy improved. In every case, the party that happened to be in power when the Depression eased went on to dominate politics for a decade or more thereafter. It seems far-fetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented well- considered ideological conversions. A more parsimonious interpretation is that voters simply— and simple- mindedly— rewarded whoever happened to be in power when things got better.
November 10, 2008 at 9:15 am
eric
I’m pretty sure that’s the same point I make with the last clause of my post, Blackadder: ‘which may have meant the election was simply about improvements in economic performance.’
November 10, 2008 at 3:48 pm
MikeF
Yeah, and the 1984 election proves the lasting value of Reaganomics. What a strange and lazy argument.
November 10, 2008 at 3:56 pm
eric
The question in this case is not one of lasting value, MikeF. As Blackadder points out, and as Bartels suggests, it’s a question of how voters viewed the immediately recent recovery. The case for lasting value is an entirely different one.