Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Alf Landon for Losing 46 States in the 1936 Election

 

November 3, 1936: President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats his Republican opponent, Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas, winning 46 out of 48 States, all but Vermont and Maine. He wins 523 Electoral Votes, Landon just 8. FDR wins 60.8 percent of the popular vote, to Landon's 36.5 percent.

Landon's next-best States? He won almost 48 percent in New Hampshire, almost 46 percent in his native Kansas, almost 45 percent in Delaware. If he had won those States, the Electoral Vote would have been 507-24 Roosevelt.

There were 8 other States where he got at least 40 percent. But even if he had won all of those, it would still have been 406-125 Roosevelt.

 
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Alf Landon for Losing 46 States in the 1936 Election

5. The Curse of Herbert Hoover. The American people did not trust the Republican Party. It had been just 4 years since the depth of the Great Depression.

4. Landon's Supporters. There were crazy people on the right wing back then, too, and they made the GOP look not like the bunch of moderates their big names claimed to be, and Landon actually was, but like a bunch who couldn't be trusted.

3. The Media. The major newspaper chains were all Republican-owned, and behind Landon. And in an era when they were the entirety of the media, Landon might have been a great candidate. He was smart, honest, and understood that he served the public, not the other way around. But this was now the era of radio and newsreels. He wasn't well-suited to it. FDR was.

2. The Republican Field. The GOP didn't have anyone else who could beat FDR, either. Most of their big guns who had been elected in the Congressional elections of 1918, '20, '24 and '28 had been beaten in the elections of 1922, '26, '30, '32 and '34.

1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was the master politician of his era, and his New Deal worked. Not perfectly, of course, but for the people for whom it did work, it was the difference between destitution and a living.

VERDICT: Not Guilty. Landon never had a chance. No matter what he had done, he would have lost.

FDR would be elected to a 3rd term in 1940, and a 4th in 1944, dying in office in 1945. Landon would serve out his term as Governor, return to the oil industry where he had made his money, and never ran for office again. He lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1987. His daughter, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, served Kansas in the U.S. Senate.