1928 United States presidential elections in Louisiana
November 6, 1928 (1928-11-06)
 
Nominee Al Smith Herbert Hoover
Party Democratic Republican
Home state New York California
Running mate Joseph T. Robinson Charles Curtis
Electoral vote 10 0
Popular vote 164,655 51,160
Percentage 76.29% 23.70%
Parish Results
Smith
  50-60%
  60-70%
  70-80%
  80-90%
  90-100%

President before election

Calvin Coolidge
Republican

 Elected President

Herbert Hoover
Republican

The 1928 United States presidential election in Louisiana took place on November 6, 1928, as part of the wider United States presidential election. Voters chose ten representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Ever since the passage of a new constitution in 1898, Louisiana had been a one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party. The Republican Party became moribund due to the disenfranchisement of blacks and the complete absence of other support bases as the Pelican State completely lacked upland or German refugee whites opposed to secession.[1] Despite this absolute single-party dominance, non-partisan tendencies remained strong among wealthy sugar planters in Acadiana and within the business elite of New Orleans.[2]

Following disfranchisement, the state’s politics became dominated by a coalition of the New Orleans-based Choctaw Club of Louisiana and Black Belt cotton planters.[3] Opposition began to emerge with the Socialist Party in the lumbering parishes of the northern hills and Imperial Calcasieu in the late 1900s, and more seriously with the Progressive movement, chiefly in the southern sugar-growing parishes, in the 1910s. Conflicts with President Wilson’s Underwoood-Simmons Act[4] allowed a Progressive Party member in Whitmell P. Martin[lower-alpha 1] to be elected to the Third Congressional District in 1914, and in 1920 the racially less hardline[5] Acadiana parishes turned to Republican candidate Warren G. Harding[6] over disagreements on foreign policy and the Nineteenth Amendment.[7] Continued opposition to the Choctaws would elect the reformer John M. Parker, originally part of Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party, as governor at the beginning of 1920; however, Parker did not deliver the promised reforms and Choctaw control returned temporarily with the 1924 election of Henry L. Fuqua.[8]

Unlike other Southern states, Louisiana’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention largely backed Catholic New York Governor Al Smith, who was opposed in the remainder of the South for his religion and opposition to Prohibition.[9] At the same time, the moribund state Republican Party — like those of Mississippi and South Carolina entirely a vehicle for Federal patronage — was undergoing a “lily white” takeover from Walter Cohen’s black-and-tans, although blacks were not expelled as occurred in Alabama, North Carolina or Virginia.[10]

Unlike the Outer South, Louisiana Democrats were controlled by fears that Republican nominee and former Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover supported social equality between the white and black races.[9] Although in the Protestant north and Florida Parishes there was opposition to Smith’s religion and views on Prohibition, this was overshadowed by the desire for loyalty to the one-party system as an instrument of racial control and White supremacy,[11] a viewpoint loudly supported by newly elected Governor Huey P. Long.[9] Moreover, identification with Smith’s Catholicism was extremely strong in the previously rebellious Acadiana parishes whose commitment to white supremacy was less intense.[12]

Consequently Smith and Arkansas Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson won Louisiana with 76.29 percent of the popular vote to the 23.70 percent for Hoover and Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis of Kansas. Only in two parishes — Livingston and Washington, both proximate to the deeply anti-Catholic Pine Belt of Mississippi and western Florida Panhandle — did Hoover pass forty percent of the vote, whilst in many Acadian parishes the GOP share fell by over thirty points. Louisiana was Smith's third strongest state after South Carolina and Mississippi.[13]

Results

1928 United States presidential election in Louisiana[14]
Party Candidate Votes %
Democratic Alfred E. Smith 164,655 76.29%
Republican Herbert Hoover 51,160 23.70%
Write-ins — 18 0.01%
Total votes 215,833 100%

Results by parish

1928 United States presidential election in Louisiana by parish[15]
Parish Alfred Emmanuel Smith
Democratic		 Herbert Clark Hoover
Republican		 Various candidates
Write-ins		 Margin Total votes cast
#  % #  % #  % #  %
Acadia 3,633 77.23% 1,071 22.77% 2,562 54.46% 4,704
Allen 1,308 64.34% 725 35.66% 583 28.68% 2,033
Ascension 1,402 76.28% 436 23.72% 966 52.56% 1,838
Assumption 948 75.54% 307 24.46% 641 51.08% 1,255
Avoyelles 2,896 87.36% 419 12.64% 2,477 74.72% 3,315
Beauregard 1,513 76.38% 468 23.62% 1,045 52.75% 1,981
Bienville 1,301 78.00% 367 22.00% 934 56.00% 1,668
Bossier 1,187 84.07% 225 15.93% 962 68.13% 1,412
Caddo 6,934 65.42% 3,665 34.58% 3,269 30.84% 10,599
Calcasieu 3,532 63.85% 1,997 36.10% 3 0.05% 1,535 27.75% 5,532
Caldwell 802 73.58% 288 26.42% 514 47.16% 1,090
Cameron 390 90.49% 41 9.51% 349 80.97% 431
Catahoula 710 67.55% 341 32.45% 369 35.11% 1,051
Claiborne 1,560 86.24% 249 13.76% 1,311 72.47% 1,809
Concordia 591 81.63% 133 18.37% 458 63.26% 724
De Soto 1,445 73.57% 517 26.32% 2 0.10% 928 47.25% 1,964
East Baton Rouge 4,575 60.44% 2,995 39.56% 1,580 20.87% 7,570
East Carroll 436 77.03% 130 22.97% 306 54.06% 566
East Feliciana 622 79.54% 160 20.46% 462 59.08% 782
Evangeline 1,873 86.19% 300 13.81% 1,573 72.39% 2,173
Franklin 1,141 69.87% 492 30.13% 649 39.74% 1,633
Grant 1,023 66.95% 505 33.05% 518 33.90% 1,528
Iberia 2,561 86.11% 413 13.89% 2,148 72.23% 2,974
Iberville 1,630 85.43% 278 14.57% 1,352 70.86% 1,908
Jackson 907 100.00% 0 0.00% 907 100.00% 907
Jefferson 5,326 87.77% 742 12.23% 4,584 75.54% 6,068
Jefferson Davis 1,703 60.33% 1,120 39.67% 583 20.65% 2,823
Lafayette 3,197 84.38% 592 15.62% 2,605 68.75% 3,789
Lafourche 1,994 89.14% 243 10.86% 1,751 78.27% 2,237
LaSalle 881 66.19% 450 33.81% 431 32.38% 1,331
Lincoln 1,041 60.84% 670 39.16% 371 21.68% 1,711
Livingston 1,047 51.78% 975 48.22% 72 3.56% 2,022
Madison 318 67.80% 151 32.20% 167 35.61% 469
Morehouse 840 71.19% 340 28.81% 500 42.37% 1,180
Natchitoches 2,099 79.96% 526 20.04% 1,573 59.92% 2,625
Orleans 55,919 79.49% 14,424 20.51% 41,495 58.99% 70,343
Ouachita 2,739 66.50% 1,380 33.50% 1,359 32.99% 4,119
Plaquemines 1,056 91.51% 98 8.49% 958 83.02% 1,154
Pointe Coupee 1,330 92.88% 102 7.12% 1,228 85.75% 1,432
Rapides 4,470 64.19% 2,494 35.81% 1,976 28.37% 6,964
Red River 891 73.09% 317 26.00% 11 0.90% 574 47.09% 1,219
Richland 1,083 81.74% 242 18.26% 841 63.47% 1,325
Sabine 1,414 65.80% 735 34.20% 679 31.60% 2,149
Saint Bernard 2,359 96.84% 77 3.16% 2,282 93.68% 2,436
Saint Charles 1,116 91.18% 108 8.82% 1,008 82.35% 1,224
Saint Helena 609 80.77% 145 19.23% 464 61.54% 754
Saint James 1,486 92.07% 128 7.93% 1,358 84.14% 1,614
Saint John the Baptist 971 89.16% 118 10.84% 853 78.33% 1,089
Saint Landry 3,394 82.54% 718 17.46% 2,676 65.08% 4,112
Saint Martin 1,892 88.66% 242 11.34% 1,650 77.32% 2,134
Saint Mary 1,754 74.35% 605 25.65% 1,149 48.71% 2,359
Saint Tammany 1,811 65.71% 945 34.29% 866 31.42% 2,756
Tangipahoa 2,834 66.70% 1,415 33.30% 1,419 33.40% 4,249
Tensas 350 78.48% 96 21.52% 254 56.95% 446
Terrebonne 1,642 85.97% 268 14.03% 1,374 71.94% 1,910
Union 1,085 71.90% 422 27.97% 2 0.13% 663 43.94% 1,509
Vermilion 2,580 85.12% 451 14.88% 2,129 70.24% 3,031
Vernon 2,191 81.42% 500 18.58% 1,691 62.84% 2,691
Washington 2,020 56.93% 1,528 43.07% 492 13.87% 3,548
Webster 1,430 80.07% 356 19.93% 1,074 60.13% 1,786
West Baton Rouge 608 88.63% 78 11.37% 530 77.26% 686
West Carroll 673 75.87% 214 24.13% 459 51.75% 887
West Feliciana 421 82.39% 90 17.61% 331 64.77% 511
Winn 1,161 68.54% 533 31.46% 628 37.07% 1,694
Totals164,65576.29%51,16023.70%180.01%113,49552.58%215,833

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Martin would join the Democratic Party in 1919.

References

  1. ↑ Phillips, Kevin P. The Emerging Republican Majority. pp. 208, 210. ISBN 9780691163246.
  2. ↑ Schott, Matthew J. (Summer 1979). "Progressives against Democracy: Electoral Reform in Louisiana, 1894-1921". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 20 (3): 247–260.
  3. ↑ Wall, Bennett H.; Rodriguez, John C. Louisiana: A History. pp. 274–275. ISBN 1118619293.
  4. ↑ Collin, Richard H. (Winter 1971). "Theodore Roosevelt's Visit to New Orleans and the Progressive Campaign of 1914". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 12 (1): 5–19.
  5. ↑ Howard, Perry H. (1954). "A New Look at Reconstruction". Political Tendencies in Louisiana, 1812-1952; An Ecological Analysis of Voting Behavior (Thesis). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. pp. 112–113. OCLC 8115.
  6. ↑ Phillips. The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 268
  7. ↑ Wall and Rodriguez. Louisiana: A History, p. 277
  8. ↑ Sindler, Allan P. (1956). Huey Long's Louisiana: State Politics, 1920-1952. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 40–41.
  9. 1 2 3 Wingo, Barbara C. (Autumn 1977). "The 1928 Presidential Election in Louisiana". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. Louisiana Historical Association. 18 (4): 405–435.
  10. ↑ Fairclough, Adam (2008). Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. p. 11. ISBN 0820331147.
  11. ↑ Phillips. The Emerging Republican Majority', p. 212
  12. ↑ Phillips. The Emerging Republican Majority, pp. 214, 268-269
  13. ↑ "1928 Presidential Election Statistics". Dave Leip’s U.S. Election Atlas.
  14. ↑ "1928 Presidential General Election Results — Louisiana". Dave Leip’s U.S. Election Atlas.
  15. ↑ "LA US President Race, November 06, 1928". Our Campaigns.
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