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.
