Tyler Cowen and David Henderson recently linked to a study of the 1932 election by Helmut Norpoth. Here’s the abstract:
In 1932, the American electorate was surveyed in a poll that has languished in the archives. The survey was conducted by Houser Associates, a pioneer in market research. It interviewed face-to-face a representative cross section about voter choices and issue attitudes. Although conducted on behalf of the Hoover campaign, the poll was not biased in his favor. The most striking revelation is that the electoral sway of the Depression was quite limited. The government was not seen by most voters as the major culprit or as having been ineffective in alleviating it. Even many FDR voters agreed. Moreover, there was no widespread “doom and gloom” about the future. What loomed larger in 1932 was the issue of Prohibition. The American people overwhelmingly favored repeal. The Democratic stand on it—that is, outright repeal—was a sure electoral winner, given Hoover’s staunch defense of Prohibition.
I’m skeptical of this claim. Consider the 1928 election, where the GOP supported prohibition and the Democrats opposed prohibition. Herbert Hoover won that election in a landslide (by 18%). Yes, religion might have cost the Democrats a few votes in 1928, but they had lost the popular vote in the previous two elections by even more overwhelming margins (25% and 26%). Those results are hard to reconcile with the claim that opposition to prohibition played a decisive role in American politics.
Then in 1932 we saw a complete reversal, with the GOP not just losing, but losing in a landslide (by 18%)—after three consecutive landslides in their favor. What had changed so dramatically? Certainly not prohibition, which was there all through the 1920s. Rather the economy had gone from a boom in late 1928 to the worst depression in US history by 1932.
It’s also interesting that support for Hoover seemed to pick up a bit in the summer of 1932, when the economy improved for three consecutive months, and then fell off in October, when the economy turned down again. (Actually, we can’t be sure of that claim because polling was not very advanced at that time. But that was the view of the media I have read, and seemed to be the view of the stock market as well.)
So why would people suggest that their vote depend on prohibition? It is possible that by 1932 prohibition had become a more important issue than during the 1920s. Repeal was seen as giving a boost to the economy, and also providing revenue to cover the budget deficit. So perhaps prohibition and the economy interacted. But I still find it hard to believe that the 1932 election would have differed so dramatically from the previous three elections were we not near the bottom of the worst depression in US history. People may think it sounds respectable to tell pollsters that the Depression is not the government’s fault, but at some level the degree of economic pain almost certainly led to at least a subconscious desire to try something new. There is plenty of evidence from other elections that a bad economy does hurt the incumbent party.
This is not to deny that prohibition was a significant vote winner for the Democrats—I believe it was. I just don’t think it explains the huge election swing from 1928.
PS. The paper itself is gated. If someone has access, please let me know if the paper addresses any of my reservations.
READER COMMENTS
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 13 2018 at 6:17pm
Polls of that time were very unreliable. The classic example that was our first case study when I took an undergrad class on the topic was the Literary Digest poll in 1936 that showed Alf Landon trouncing FDR. It had a sample size of well over 2 million. George Gallup’s nascent company did a survey with a much smaller sample size and got it right.
As with Scott, I have no access to the original paper so can’t say whether it is good bad or indifferent.
Jon Murphy
Aug 13 2018 at 7:03pm
Sorry, is that 18% or 18 percentage points?
Benjamin Cole
Aug 13 2018 at 9:01pm
http://www.thegreatfiction.com/2017/10/09/why-non-interventionists-opposed-american-entry-into-world-war-ii/
Yes, surveys are unreliable.
By some polls, about 80% of Americans opposed the entry into World War II, even after Germany occupied France.
FDR historians record that the US only entered the war after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and then Germany declared war on the US.
So we know that public opinion is highly variable, depending upon recent events and US propaganda.
BTW I think US entry into World War II was the greatest moment in US history, and in this particular case government propaganda was useful.
Scott Sumner
Aug 13 2018 at 11:34pm
Alan, That’s a good example. In fairness, the abstract says they have a fairly representative sample.
Jon, By 18 points, 58% to 40%.
Ben, You said:
“BTW I think US entry into World War II was the greatest moment in US history, and in this particular case government propaganda was useful.”
I doubt whether propaganda had a major role in the US entering the war. I believe it was Pearl Harbor.
Benjamin Cole
Aug 14 2018 at 11:58pm
Scott–
US entry in WWII:
Yes, of course the catalyst was the bombing at Pearl Harbor and then Germany declaring war in the US four days later.
But the US population had been primed. Go on youtube and you can see US-government films, made before Pearl Harbor, lionizing the Chinese for their resistance to the Japan occupation, and why the US should help China. Which the US did.
Likewise, there was plenty of propaganda about the Germans before US entry.
What is remarkable is that even though much of the US propaganda was “true” (and often understated atrocities) the American people were decidedly against going to war. The US had a citizen-soldier military back then, so public acceptance of war was nearly a prerequisite.
Add on: The US government could have responded to Pearl Harbor in many ways—for example, a military drive culminating in a lone successful firebombing of Tokyo, and the killing of 100,000 people.
“We taught them a lesson they will never forget,” could have the the government line. But FDR/Truman wanted unconditional surrender, and so propagandists fell into line. The public did too.
In hindsight, it appears FDR/Truman made largely the correct decisions in WWII, although the human costs (especially in Japan) are too awful to contemplate.
(It may be had the US done nothing in WWII, both the German and Japanese empires would have modernized, become more civil and prosperous and major and successful trading parties. In that case, the German and Japanese empires would be treated in US media as formerly dark empires that have been rehabilitated. Present-day China come to mind. After all, Mao is in the past, and many want to embrace China. Did Mao kill more or less people than the Germans and the Japanese?)
In conclusion, it appears US government propaganda was useful in helping the US to enter WWII, to bring about the correct results, and helped to shape US public opinion as to the proper prosecution of WWII.
Jeff Hummel
Aug 14 2018 at 4:28pm
Scott,
I agree that surveys from this period are problematic. But what you are missing is that prohibition was not even an issue in the 1928 election. Although Al Smith, the Democratic candidate, was known to oppose prohibition, his party’s platform explicitly promised to enforce prohibition, which had been enshrined in the Eighteenth Amendment: “Speaking for the national Democracy, this convention pledges the party and its nominees to an honest effort to enforce the eighteenth amendment and all other provisions of the federal Constitution and all laws enacted pursuant thereto.”
In contrast, the Democratic platform in 1932 called openly for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. Congress by two-thirds vote formally proposed the Twenty-First Amendment, repealing the Eighteenth, on February 20, 1933, after the 1932 election but while Hoover was still president. The amendment had been ratified by state conventions (not legislatures) in the requisite three-quarters of the states on December 5 of the same year.
David Henderson
Aug 15 2018 at 1:00pm
Thanks, Jeff. Interesting.
Scott Sumner
Aug 14 2018 at 7:26pm
Jeff, Are you sure it wasn’t an issue at all? I only know one thing about the 1928 election, that “Rum, Romanism and rebellion” was the famous phrase employed by the GOP campaign to describe the Democrats. Doesn’t “Rum” refer to opposition to Prohibition?
Jeff Hummel
Aug 15 2018 at 2:58pm
The Republican denunciation of the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” emerged in the post-Civil War period, supposedly in the election of 1884, although it may have circulated earlier. The “Rum” part is because the Republicans at this time were generally advocating prohibition laws at the state level, with the Democrats opposed. I believe that the phrase ceased currency after the Gilded Age. After all, William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate for president in 1896, 1900, and 1908, favored prohibition privately, although he didn’t publicly endorse it until 1909. My guess is that by the 1920s the phrase would only have been invoked by a few old-timers, if at all. Do you know any instance of it appearing that late?
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