United States presidential election in Alabama, 1928
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The 1928 United States presidential election in Alabama took place on November 6, 1928, as part of the
1928 United States presidential election The 1928 United States presidential election was the 36th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1928. Republican Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover defeated the Democratic nominee, Governor Al Smith of New York. After ...
, which was held throughout all contemporary forty-eight states. Voters chose twelve representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. This was the last election in which Alabama had twelve electoral votes: the Great Migration caused the state to lose
congressional districts Congressional districts, also known as electoral districts and legislative districts, electorates, or wards in other nations, are divisions of a larger administrative region that represent the population of a region in the larger congressional bod ...
after the
1930 Census The United States census of 1930, conducted by the Census Bureau one month from April 1, 1930, determined the resident population of the United States to be 122,775,046, an increase of 13.7 percent over the 106,021,537 persons enumerated during ...
produced the first Congressional redistricting since 1911. Alabama voted narrowly for the Democratic nominee, Governor Alfred E. "Al" Smith of
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, over the Republican nominee, former
Secretary of Commerce The United States secretary of commerce (SecCom) is the head of the United States Department of Commerce. The secretary serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all matters relating to commerce. The secretary rep ...
Herbert Hoover of California. Smith's running mate was
Senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, while Hoover's running mate was Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis of Kansas. The only other candidate on the ballot was Socialist Norman Thomas, who received a mere 460 votes.Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections
1928 Presidential General Election Results – Alabama
/ref> Since the 1890s, Alabama had become a one-party state ruled by the Democratic Party. Disenfranchisement of almost all African-Americans and a large proportion of
poor whites Poor White is a sociocultural classification used to describe economically disadvantaged Whites in the English-speaking world, especially White Americans with low incomes. In the United States, Poor White (or Poor Whites of the South for ...
via poll taxes, literacy tests and informal harassment had essentially eliminated opposition parties outside of presidential campaigns in a few
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hill counties. The only competitive statewide elections became Democratic Party primaries, and ever since 1900 the Democratic Party won over two-thirds of the limited number of votes cast even in presidential elections. Between 1900 and 1924, the southern bloc had been able to veto presidential nominations by extralimital branches of the Democratic Party. This changed before the 1928 election, as most Democrats decided to sit out the convention due to their belief the party had no chance of winning the November election. Consequently,
Al Smith Alfred Emanuel Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was an American politician who served four terms as Governor of New York and was the Democratic Party's candidate for president in 1928. The son of an Irish-American mother and a C ...
, a four-term
Governor of New York The governor of New York is the head of government of the U.S. state of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor has ...
, was able to win the nomination on the first ballot. Four characteristics of Smith made him anything but an ideal candidate for Southern Democrats: he was a devout Catholic, opposed to Prohibition, linked with New York City's Tammany Hall political machine, and the son of Irish and Italian immigrants. Whilst it is generally thought that the South would have accepted a man possessing ''one'' of those characteristics, the combination proved a bitter dose for many of Alabama's loyal Democrats. It was also thought by some, including those close to the revived
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
, that Smith was too friendly with blacks and some Alabama whites unsubtly called Smith "nigger, nigger, nigger." Nonetheless, these people did not think Hoover any safer on the race issue, although they did prefer Hoover's view on Prohibition. The conflict between disapproval of Smith's faith and policies on one hand and extreme traditional hostility towards the Republican Party in almost all of Alabama (the only exceptions being the historically anti-secession counties of Winston and a few populist strongholds like Chilton) produced an exceptionally bitter campaign.Feldman; ''Politics, Society and the Klan in Alabama''; p. 168.
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whites – who had controlled the state government since the disenfranchisement of blacks and poor whites – also felt Smith's social views obnoxious, especially his opposition to the Ku Klux Klan. Consequently, many of Alabama's voters swore to vote for Hoover without declaring themselves Republicans, instead calling themselves "Hoovercrats". Defections were particularly pronounced in North Alabama, where a contiguous block of counties from Birmingham northeastwards to the Tennessee border uniformly gave majorities for Hoover. Hoover also won a number of counties in the far southern coastal regions, whose soils had always proved unsuitable for cotton plantations. On the other hand, the whites of the black belt, who were like Al Smith "wet" (opposed to prohibition of alcohol), did not bolt from the Democratic Party because of this alcohol issue and their strong view that the Democrats were the best safeguard for white supremacy. Overall, Smith held the state by just over seven thousand votes, although opponents of Smith believed that
electoral fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of ...
was widespread in the
Black Belt Black Belt may refer to: Martial arts * Black belt (martial arts), an indication of attainment of expertise in martial arts * ''Black Belt'' (magazine), a magazine covering martial arts news, technique, and notable individuals Places * Black B ...
. State judges Hugh Locke, Horace Wilkinson and Ira Champion argued that up to seventeen thousand ballots for Hoover had been rejected. No recount, however, was ever contemplated by authorities. This result constitutes the third-closest presidential election in Alabama’s history after that of
1980 Events January * January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. * January 6 – Global Positioning System time epoch begins at 00:00 UTC. * January 9 – ...
, another Republican landslide (this time affected by the personal vote in the South for Jimmy Carter), and that of 1848, when Democratic nominee
Lewis Cass Lewis Cass (October 9, 1782June 17, 1866) was an American military officer, politician, and statesman. He represented Michigan in the United States Senate and served in the Cabinets of two U.S. Presidents, Andrew Jackson and James Buchanan. He w ...
won the state by 1.12 percentage points. A strong correlation was revealed between percentage of blacks in the population and (white) voter loyalty to the Democratic Party (with the r-value equaling 0.7268): of the twenty-six counties won by Hoover, only five had population over thirty percent Negro, and most of these were urban areas less attached to the traditions of black belt politics, while Chambers County was the home of Hoovercrat senator
J. Thomas Heflin James Thomas Heflin (April 9, 1869 – April 22, 1951), nicknamed "Cotton Tom", was an American politician who served as a United States House of Representatives, United States representative and United States Senate, United States senator fro ...
. At the other extreme, of the ten counties possessing populations under ten percent African American in 1930, Bunche, Ralph J.; ''The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR'', p. 65 only Marion County stayed loyal to Smith and only by a very narrow margin.


Results


Results by county


See also

*
United States presidential elections in Alabama Following is a table of United States presidential elections in Alabama, ordered by year. Since its admission to statehood in 1819, Alabama has participated in every U.S. presidential election except the election of 1864, during the American Civil ...


Notes


References

{{State results of the 1928 U.S. presidential election, state=expanded Alabama
1928 Events January * January – British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA. * January 1 – Eastern Bloc emigration and defection: Boris Bazhanov, J ...
1928 Alabama elections