Did the "FDR" Re-alignment really begin in 1928?

[Beet]

If the New Deal realignment is said to be the Democratic coalition of Dixiecrats, Northern cities, and Western farmers, there are some interesting anomalies that appeared before the New Deal or the Depression.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island

1928 was the first time in state history that Massachusetts had ever voted majority Democratic. It was the first time Rhode Island voted majority Democratic since 1852. (In 1912 Wilson did carry both states, but only with 35-39%) Yet despite Hoover winning a massive 58% landslide and every state outside the deep South, both went for Smith. In the decades since these would become two of the most reliably Democratic states in the nation, supporting Truman, Kennedy, Humphrey, Carter, and Dukakis. The breaking point was not 1932 but 1928. This is all the more interesting since Coolidge had crushed John Davis 62%-25% in Massachusetts and 60%-36% in Rhode Island.

New York. Harding got 65% in New York. Coolidge won it 56% to 29%. Hughes defeated Wilson in 1916 by a comfortable 6 percentage points. Wilson underperformed (though barely) his national average in 1912. It consistently supported McKinley, TR, and Taft. Clearly, in the alignment of Mark Hanna's day, New York was a solid Northern Republican state.

However in 1928, Hoover received 58% of the national vote and won only by 49.8%-47.4% in New York. It was the only state that Hoover won in which he failed to carry a majority. A closer look reveals that Smith won all five of New York's burroughs, all of which were carried by both Hoover and Coolidge.

Kings county, New York, which contains Brooklyn burrough, has gone Democratic in every single presidential election since 1928. In 1924 it had gone Republican, and prior to that it had a 5-3 Republican record. 1928 also marked the first time the Democrat had won an outright majority in the burrough since 1892, something the Democratic candidate has never failed to do since (McGovern got 51%).

In Queens county, Smith got 53%, up from 31% for Davis. In 1932, FDR got 61%.

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania went heavily for Hoover in 1928, and also went for him in 1932. Philadelphia however tells a different story.

1936 539,757 Dem 329,881 GOP
1932 260,276 Dem 331,092 GOP
1928 276,573 Dem 420,320 GOP
1924 54,213 Dem 347,457 GOP
1920 90,151 Dem 307,826 GOP
1916 90,800 Dem 194,163 GOP
1912 66,308 Dem 91,944 GOP
1908 75,310 Dem 185,263 GOP
1904 48,784 Dem 227,709 GOP
1900 58,179 Dem 173,657 GOP
1896 63,323 Dem 176,462 GOP
1892 84,470 Dem 116,685 GOP

We see that the Democratic vote jumped over 400% in Philadelphia in 1928, but actually fell in 1932, and increased just 107% in 1936.

Illinois The Democratic vote in Illinois from 1892-1924 averaged about 500,000-600,000. In 1928 it suddenly jumped to 1.3 million, with the highest percentage since the last "realignment" in 1896. Of these 700,000-800,000 new Democratic votes, about 500,000 came from Cook county. In 1932 FDR's statewide total was about 1.9 million, of which Cook county contributed 200,000 of his increased total.

So my question is, was the "New Deal" realignment really defined by the New Deal? Was there a re-alignment emerging already before the Stock Market crash, and the New Deal merely accelerated this? I believe that to be the case. You can judge for yourself.

[Beet]

I'm not trying to downplay Hoover's win, I'm trying to make an observation about the nature of the so-called New Deal realignment. We realize that Reagan and Gingrich did not magically create new coalitions entirely in one year, they tapped into long-trending forces that had been building up for some time.

Yet we blindly assume that the New Deal realignment was based on a singular event... while possible, a close inspection of the 1928 returns shows that doesn't appear to  be true. These returns seem to show that the "Northern labor" bloc had already made a historic movement in 1928 in the major Northern cities that was obscured by Hoover's overall win, and that even without the Great Depression, a Dixiecrat-Northern city coalition was already emerging and would have been a force in 1932 no matter what the economic conditions were.

I'm not sure what Dave's polic about posting maps in the members section is, I'll remove these if asked. But these are county returns in New York 1924-36. Notice in particular the five burroughs:

New York in 1924- last election prior to 1928 (lest you feel LaFollette skewed things, in 1920, Harding also won every county)



New York in 1928- before the so-called "new Deal" realignment is commonly thought to have begun



New York in 1936- the end of the so-called "New Deal" realignment

[Beet]

I'm not trying to downplay Hoover's win, I'm trying to make an observation about the nature of the so-called New Deal realignment.

I was kidding about downplaying the Hoover victory Beet.

Oh ok, sorry :x

[Beet]

If you view the New Deal Coalition as comprising Northeastern Urbanites, Southerners and Rural Westerners (as it did in 32 and 36), then 1928 was different - the Western component is missing.

See Bob's post... the farm crisis of the 1920s was the precursor to the Depression and was already turning some Western areas away from the GOP.

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True, though the Kansas-Nebraska-Dakota belt was always one of the weakest areas for FDR. West of that belt (MT, WY, ID, CO, UT, NM, AZ, NV), they remained largely in the Democratic coalition until 1952, when they irrevocably became strongly GOP leaning.

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Yeah, the Catholics had always been one of the biggest components of the New Deal coalition. Which makes Kerry's loss of Catholics all the more nail-in-the-coffin for that. However, Dixiecrats still have big majorities in the MS, LA and AR state legislatures. Its hard to imagine that the process which began in 1948 still has not been completed.

[Beet]

1928 was the first time in state history that Massachusetts had ever voted Democratic, a major party that had been around for 100 years. Rhode Island had not gone Democrat since 1852.

False. See 1912.

Oops, my bad.