The U.S. presidential election of 1932 was the 37th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1932. The election proved a smashing defeat for the Socialist Party and a vote of no confidence in the party and its leader's ability to combat the Great Depression. Incumbent PresidentHosea Blackford was soundly defeated in a rematch with Democratic front runnerCalvin Coolidge, who had been defeated by President Blackford four years previously.
Despite the odds stacked against him Blackford stumped across the country. The most notable event during the fall campaign was the Japanese bombing of Los Angeles as part of the Pacific War. The event was more humiliating as Blackford was actually campaigning in Los Angeles.
However, Coolidge never actually took office; he died of a heart attack on January 5, less than a month before he could take office as president. That meant that Hoover was inaugurated president on February 1, 1933 (the Constitution having been amended a few years before to move the date up from March 4).
OTL Election[]
In 1932, Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover, who had won the 1928 election in a landslide, lost in a landslide to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the failed Democratic Vice Presidential candidate from 1920, and his running mate John Nance Garner. President Hoover's popularity had rapidly eroded in the face of his administration's ineffective responses to the Great Depression. Former President Calvin Coolidge, who had already retired from politics, watched from the shadows, and his death on January 5 had no effect on the big picture.
