1936 United States presidential election in Massachusetts
election in Massachusetts
The 1936 United States presidential election in Massachusetts took place on November 3, 1936, as part of the 1936 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all contemporary 48 states. Voters chose 17 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
Massachusetts voted for the Democratic nominee, incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, over the Republican nominee, Governor Alf Landon of Kansas. Roosevelt ran with incumbent Vice President John Nance Garner of Texas, while Landon's running mate was newspaper publisher Frank Knox of Illinois. Also running that year was William Lemke of the short-lived Union Party, and his running mate Thomas C. O'Brien.
Roosevelt carried the state with 51.22% of the vote to Landon's 41.76%, a Democratic victory margin of 9.46%. Lemke came in third, with 6.45%, while in a distant fourth was Socialist Norman Thomas with only 0.28%. Massachusetts weighed in as about 14.8% more Republican than the nation.
In the Jacksonian era, Massachusetts had been a typically Whig state, and after the founding of the Republican Party, it transitioned to being a bastion of Yankee Republicanism. In 1928, with Al Smith heading the Democratic ticket, a coalition of Irish Catholic and other ethnic immigrant voters primarily based in urban areas flipped Massachusetts and neighboring Rhode Island Democratic for the first time since before the Civil War (or, in Massachusetts' case, ever), leaving aside Wilson's low plurality wins in these states in the three-way race of 1912.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1936 United States presidential election in Massachusetts” is election in Massachusetts. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through United, States and presidential, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “election in Massachusetts” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17100481. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1936, 1928 and 1912.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “1936 United States presidential election in Massachusetts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.