… A fascinating survey conducted for the Herbert Hoover campaign in 1932 revealed Americans’ decision to throw the Republican president out in favor of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was not primarily based on the miserable economic conditions.
“What loomed larger in 1932 was the issue of Prohibition,” writes political scientist Helmut Norpoth of Stony Brook University. The outlawing of alcohol, which had been in place for 12 years, was widely unpopular. Hoover supported it, and—largely in response—the electorate rejected him.
Norpoth’s paper, published in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics, is both a fascinating piece of American political history and a reminder that assumptions about what drives voters’ electoral choices are often mistaken. CONT.
Tom Jacobs, Pacific Standard