Outside a few Presidential and gubernatorial elections, Washington was a virtually one-party Republican state during the “System of 1896”,[3] where the only competition was via Republican primaries.[4] Apart from Woodrow Wilson’s two elections, during the first of which the GOP was severely divided, no Democrat after William Jennings Bryan in 1900 carried a single county in the state until Al Smith won German Catholic Ferry County in 1928.
However, since the 1928 election when Washington state had been won by more than 36 percentage points, the United States had fallen into the Great Depression, which had been particularly severe in the rural western parts of the nation.[5] The New Deal was especially popular in the Pacific States,[6] and as a result Roosevelt was assured of carrying the state.
Washington state was won by GovernorFranklin D. Roosevelt (D–New York), running with SpeakerJohn Nance Garner, with 57.46 percent of the popular vote, against incumbent President Herbert Hoover (R–California), running with Vice President Charles Curtis, with 33.94 percent of the popular vote. Roosevelt flipped every county won by his rival Hoover in 1928, becoming the first Democrat to sweep every county in Washington state – a feat he would repeat in 1936 but which has never been emulated since. He was the first-ever Democratic victor in the southwestern logging counties of Klickitat, Lewis and Pacific,[7] and also in inland Benton County and Chelan County.[7] Roosevelt was also the first Democrat since William Jennings Bryan in 1896, and only the second overall, to carry the state with an outright majority.
This was the last election in Washington in which voters chose presidential electors directly. The state adopted the modern "short ballot" starting with the 1936 election.
^Burnham, Walter Dean; ‘The System of 1896’, in Kleppner, Paul (editor), The Evolution of American Electoral Systems, pp. 176-179 ISBN0313213798
^Murray, Keith; ‘Issues and Personalities of Pacific Northwest Politics, 1889-1950’, The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 3 (July 1950), pp. 213-233
^Davies, Richard O.; ‘The Politics of Desperation: William A. Hirth and the Presidential Election of 1932’; Agricultural History, vol. 38, no. 4 (October 1964), pp. 226-234
^Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 485 ISBN9780691163246
^ abMenendez, Albert J.; The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004, p. 332 ISBN0786422173
^ abWashington Secretary of State. "Presidential Electors". Abstract of Votes Polled in the State of Washington at the General Election held November 8, 1932. Olympia, Washington. pp. 5–11.
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