Why did FDR lose support in 1944 from 1940?

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

1940                                              1944           
54.7% - 44.8%                               53.4% - 45.9%             (PV, percentage)
449 - 82                                         432 - 99                        (EVs)
27.3 million - 22.3 million                25.6 million - 22 million (PV, total)

Dewey picked up Ohio, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, while FDR took Michigan.

Why did this happen? Was this entirely turnout related? Was Dewey actually appealing to FDR '40 voters this time around? Was it FDR's rumored health issues? Do we have reliable exit polls from this election?

If anything, I'd expect FDR to pick up support from a "rally around the flag" effect and match or even exceed 1936.

[Antonio the Sixth]

He broke a promise and thought he could get away with it. It is the same reason Woodrow Wilson became unpopular in his second term.

Yeah, it's not like the US was attacked by an axis power or something...

[bedstuy]

There's a recent book on the 1944 campaign, I think it's called Final Victory.  Having read that on a plane a year or so ago...

-Dewey was a more polished candidate than Willkie.
-FDR was dying of heart failure and until early in 1944, he had a horrible, incompetent doctor who wasn't treating his heart disease in any way.  He was only able to campaign because of his new doctor's treatment.
-FDR may have lost even more ground among civilians, but he won a huge majority of military votes, a pretty big group back then.  This was actually a huge issue because the GOP wanted to deprive active duty military of their vote and FDR's campaign really counted on their turnout.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Not sure, but maybe it has to do with the fact that people thought FDR had been in office too long, and Dewey was moderate enough to peel off some of those voters.

[Kevinstat]

He broke a promise and thought he could get away with it. It is the same reason Woodrow Wilson became unpopular in his second term.

Yeah, it's not like the US was attacked by an axis power or something...

That makes a lot of sense. I assume you would characterize going to war after a terrorist organization flies an airplane into an american building in the same context & I understand the differences. With all three those being both American entry into both world wars and the iraq war a symbol of America was attacked. The USS Maine under President Wilson & the Pearl Harbor attack & 9/11.

The explosion of the USS Maine (whether from a Spanish mine or not) happened in 1898 and was a catalyst for the Spanish-American War, not World War I.  I don't think it was the sinking of any single ship that brought the U.S. into WWI, but the fact that Germany made it clear that they would attempt to sink any American ship within the waters of the Allied nations without warning and had followed up on that threat, sinking three merchant ships I believe.  Also the Zimmerman telegram, promising territory in the southwest to Mexico if it joined the war on Germany's side after the U.S. went to war with Germany.

[Podgy the Bear]

There's a recent book on the 1944 campaign, I think it's called Final Victory.  Having read that on a plane a year or so ago...

-Dewey was a more polished candidate than Willkie.
-FDR was dying of heart failure and until early in 1944, he had a horrible, incompetent doctor who wasn't treating his heart disease in any way.  He was only able to campaign because of his new doctor's treatment.
-FDR may have lost even more ground among civilians, but he won a huge majority of military votes, a pretty big group back then.  This was actually a huge issue because the GOP wanted to deprive active duty military of their vote and FDR's campaign really counted on their turnout.

Hard to believe that FDR was only 63 when he died.  In addition to his suboptimal medical care, his significant use of tobacco didn't help...

Dewey ran quite strong in the Midwest, and he increased the popular vote total in the Border states (such as Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Tennessee).  He came quite close in Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey (with far more electoral votes in 1944 than today)--which would have given him around 200 electoral votes.

History hasn't been too kind to Dewey--but he had a good 12 year run at the New York statehouse--running again and winning in 1950 after he unexpectedly lost the 1948 Presidential election.

[mianfei]

According to Kevin Phillips' 1969 The Emerging Republican Majority, FDR lost support in 1944 almost entirely due to the strong isolationist sentiment in rural areas, most especially Appalachia. Phillips says that FDR's loss of support in 1944 was exactly analogous to the isolationist voting that gave Tennessee, Missouri and (partially) Maryland to Harding in 1920.



As you can see from this map, FDR lost very heavily in the mountain parts of the Outer South and the Border. The Missouri anomaly reflects, of course, the presence of Missouri native Harry Truman on the Democratic ticket, replacing Henry Wallace, and that the state has more German influence than the other Outer South or Border States. It has occurred to me, actually, that Dewey was a poor candidate for those Border States because he was so Northeastern, so the trend due to isolationism could have been even stronger than it was.