| REVIEWER | RATING & REVIEW |
 | jgls (12)
09/29/2007 | alf landon received fewer electoral votes than either george mcgovern or michael dukakis. fdr wouldn't have lost this election if he wore eleanor's clothes in public.
(1 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | abichara (60)
02/07/2005 | Not very surprising, but at the time, many polls indicated that this race was much tighter than originally imagined. At the end, only Maine and Vermont went Republican. Roosevelt was a highly polarizing figure whose New Deal programs were very controversial at the time, and they still are to an extent. However he was probably one of the most talented politicians to ever occupy the White House, thus he was able to portray his Republican opponents as malefactors of great wealth in his words. Although his programs weren't very effective in ending the depression, he was seen as a friend to the working classes. Such a populist message all but guaranteed him re-election.
(0 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | bsd987 (1)
11/14/2004 | Technically this was a surprise, though in the great scheme of things it was not.
(1 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | JonTheMan (27)
10/26/2004 | The more radically left-wing Huey Long had been assassinated the year previous and FDR (always the sly politician) had moved ostensibly to the left to steal the thunder from other more pronounced left-wingers with more staunch anti-corporate rhetoric. With this threat removed FDR could easily rely on the fact unemployment had fallen from nearly 25% to almost 14% in the period 1932-36 and the fact there had been a 26% gain in payrolls during the period of the NRA alone to display a clear degree of relief and recovery. With his immense personal charisma and engaging use of the radio medium he had almost formed a cult of personality around himself. All in all FDR beat Landon with roughly 11 million votes in what was possibly the least surprising electoral result in American history. UPDATE: Incidentally this was 60.8% of the popular vote, the highest share ever recorded in the history of the United States.
(2 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | Redoedo (39)
09/06/2004 | The economy by this time had shown some improvement, and FDR has implemented many popular relief programs to assist with economic recovery. Landon had no chance here.
(1 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | ronbu (0)
09/06/2004 | The only people who would have been surprised were those who believed the Literary Digest poll which predicted that Alf Landon would win the election with 57% of the popular vote. But we know that the 1936 LD poll was a flawed poll, because it used telephone books to find people, and a much greater percentage of Republicans had phones than Democrats. Also, a voluntary poll based on postcards tended to overestimate the challenger's percentage. Most people would have figured that because of FDRs great speech making ability and the improvement in the economy that FDR would be re-elected.
(1 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
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