Ever since the Panic of 1893 and the Populist movement, Michigan had been rigidly one-party polity dominated by the Republican Party.[2] In the 1894 elections, the Democratic Party lost all but one seat in the Michigan legislature,[3] and over the four ensuing decades the party would never make major gains there.[2]
The dominance of the culture of the Lower Peninsula by anti-slavery Yankees[4] would be augmented by the turn of formerly Democratic-leaning German Catholics away from that party as a result of the remodelled party's agrarian and free silver sympathies, which became rigidly opposed by both the upper class and workers who followed them,[5] while the Populist movement eliminated Democratic ties with the business and commerce of Michigan and other Northern states.[6] By the 1920s, the only significant financial backer of the state Democratic Party was billionaire William Comstock.[7]
Unlike the other states of the Upper Midwest, the Yankee influence on the culture of the Lower Peninsula was so strong that left-wing third parties did not provide significant opposition to the Republicans, nor was there more than a moderate degree of coordinated factionalism within the hegemonic Michigan Republican Party.[8]
In 1918 a major reaction against incumbent President Woodrow Wilson throughout the Midwest, due to supposed preferential treatment of Southern farmers.[9] Republicans would hold every seat in the State Senate for over a decade after the fall election,[10] as they had between 1895 and 1897 and between 1905 and 1911, and every seat in both houses of the state legislature between 1921 and 1923 and again from 1925 to 1927.
Neither Smith nor Republican nominees Herbert Hoover of California and running mate Charles Curtis campaigned in Michigan. A small poll at the end of September showed Hoover leading in Michigan by 286 votes to 160,[18] whilst a larger poll in October showed Hoover leading by three to one.[19] As it turned out, the October poll was accurate: Hoover received slightly over seventy percent of the popular vote compared to Smith and running mate Joseph T. Robinson's 28.92 percent.[20][21]
With 70.36 percent of the popular vote, Michigan would prove to be Hoover's second strongest victory in the nation after Kansas.[22] Hoover nonetheless fell five percent short of Calvin Coolidge's record performance from 1924 due to losses of up to twenty percent in the pro-La Follette western Upper Peninsula, and in heavily Catholic Wayne and Huron Counties. Nevertheless, scholars have demonstrated that there was no realignment of the one-party system in Michigan until the following 1932 election.[23] The Democratic Party did however win a seat in the state Senate for the first time since 1916.[10]
As of the 2024 presidential election[update], this remains the last time a Republican presidential candidate carried Wayne County, home of Michigan's most populous city, Detroit,[24][25] and also the last time any presidential candidate won every single county in the state (which only previously occurred in 1904, 1908, and 1924).
^ abBurnham, Walter Dean (December 23, 1981). "The System of 1896: An Analysis". The Evolution of American Electoral Systems. Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 178–179. ISBN0313213798.
^"Swamped! The Democrats Drowned Out by a Tremendous Republican Tidal Wave". The L'Anse Sentinel. L'Anse. November 10, 1894. p. 1.
^English, Gustavus P.; Proceedings of the Ninth Republican National Convention (1888), p. 234
^Sundquist, James (December 2010). Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years. Brookings Institution Press. p. 526. ISBN978-0815719090.
^Hansen, John Mark; Shigeo, Hirano; Snyder Jr., James M. (February 27, 2017). "Parties within Parties: Parties, Factions, and Coordinated Politics, 1900-1980". In Gerber, Alan S.; Schickler, Eric (eds.). Governing in a Polarized Age: Elections, Parties, and Political Representation in America. Cambridge University Press. pp. 165–168. ISBN978-1-107-09509-0.
^Morello, John A. (April 30, 2001). Albert D. Lasker, Advertising, and the Election of Warren G. Harding. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 64. ISBN0275970302.
^Dunbar, Willis Frederick; May, George S. (1970). Michigan, a History of the Wolverine State. Eerdman. pp. 549–551. ISBN0802870430.
^Phillips, Kevin P. (1970). The Emerging Republican Majority. Princeton University Press. p. 405. ISBN978-0-691-16324-6.
^See Lichtman, Allan J. (1979). Prejudice and the Old Politics: the Presidential Election of 1928. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 98–99. ISBN0807813583.
^Warren, Kenneth F.; Encyclopedia of U.S. campaigns, elections, and electoral behavior: A-M, Volume 1, p. 620 ISBN1412954894
^Glad, Paul W. (2013). The History of Wisconsin – Volume V: War, a New Era, and Depression, 1914-1940. Wisconsin Historical Society. p. 321. ISBN978-0870206320.
^"Straw Vote Gives Hoover Big Lead in National Race: Assured of Election as President According to Literary Digest Computation". The La Crosse Tribune. La Crosse, Wisconsin. September 20, 1928. p. 7.
^"Smith Moving Up In Literary-Digest Poll: Straw Vote of 2,000,000 Includes 40 States". The Commercial Appeal. Memphis, Tennessee. October 12, 1928. p. 9.
