Ever since statehood, North Dakota had been overwhelmingly Republican at state level and in many presidential elections,[1] although progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson was able to carry the state in both his campaigns in 1912 and 1916, in the second due to his opposition to American involvement in World War I. In the following three elections, the state's voting would be shaped by its extreme isolationism in the aftermath of the United States ultimately entering the war in 1917 and Wilson's “League of Nations” proposal, to which the Russian Germans who dominated North Dakota's populace at the time were vehemently opposed.[2] North Dakota thus shifted markedly from voting four-to-one for Republican Warren G. Harding against pro-League Democrat James M. Cox in 1920, to being the second-strongest state for Robert M. La Follette under the Nonpartisan League banner in 1924, to Republican Herbert Hoover carrying the state by a comparatively narrow margin over anti-Prohibition Catholic Al Smith in 1928. Severe drought and depression in the following three years turned the state overwhelmingly to Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, despite President Hoover's call to “be safe” by supporting him; at the same time North Dakota elected progressive, pro-New Deal Republicans to fill its House and Senate seats.[3] One of these, Gerald Nye, would say in 1934 that the party needed to
turn its back up “that which has been its undoing, namely the private money bags”.[4]
Roosevelt won North Dakota by a margin of 33.02 percentage points and for the second consecutive election carried every county in the state. As of the 2024 presidential election[update], this is the last time that a Democratic presidential candidate has carried every county in the state, and the last time that the Democratic candidate carried the following counties: Golden Valley, Grant, Kidder, Logan, McIntosh, Mercer, and Sheridan.[5]
Results
1936 United States presidential election in North Dakota[6]
Controversial Democratic governor and Senator from Louisiana Huey P. Long had planned to run against Roosevelt on his "Share Our Wealth" platform in the 1936 election,[8] but was assassinated in September 1935. The remains of the Share Our Wealth movement were taken over by “radio priest” Charles Coughlin, who nominated North Dakota Congressman William Lemke as the presidential candidate of the new “Union Party” on June 9,[9] whose isolationist platform was vague and Coughlin's personal creation.[10] Lemke had had a long history as a progressive reformer since endorsing Woodrow Wilson in 1912.[11]
A poor campaigner and speaker, Lemke was unable to build his hoped-for “consensus of despair” amongst agrarian radicals, Southern poor whites, Catholics, and the elderly.[12] North Dakota's extreme isolationism and support for its favorite son meant Lemke received 13.41 percent of his home state's vote: over four and a half times the 2.88 percent of on-ballot votes he won nationally.[b] Lemke exceeded 28 percent in the counties of Burke, Sheridan and Hettinger, and ran second ahead of Republican nominee Alf Landon in six counties. However, he did not make the impact personally expected when nominated, and unlike elsewhere in the nation, Lemke's best vote was not where ethnic and religious influences might have been expected to give him the largest vote, but in the northwest where local leaders held votes for him.[13] Nonetheless, only Ross Perot in 1992 and Evan McMullin in 2016 have since equaled Lemke's performance for a third-party candidate in any non-Southern county.[c]
^ abcdefIn this county where Lemke ran second ahead of Landon, margin given is Roosevelt vote minus Lemke vote and percentage margin Roosevelt percentage minus Lemke percentage.
^Between 1948 and 1968 inclusive, the political impact of the Civil Rights Movement meant unpledged and "Dixiecrat" nominees frequently exceeded Lemke’s best performance and outpolled one or both major-party nominees in the Deep South and occasionally elsewhere in antebellum slave states.
References
^Hansen, John Mark; Shigeo Hirano, and Snyder, James M. Jr.; ‘Parties within Parties: Parties, Factions, and Coordinated Politics, 1900-1980’; in Gerber, Alan S. and Schickler, Eric; Governing in a Polarized Age: Elections, Parties, and Political Representation in America, pp. 143-159 ISBN978-1-107-09509-0
^Lubell, Samuel; The Future of American Politics (1956), pp. 156-164
^Grant, Michael Johnston; Francis, Charles A. and Flora, Cornelia; Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation in the Great Plains, 1929-1945, pp. 69-70 ISBN9780803271050
^Sheppard, Si; The Buying of the Presidency? Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New Deal, and the Election of 1936, p. 25 ISBN9781440831058
^Blackorby, Edward C.; ‘William Lemke: Agrarian Radical and Union Party Presidential Candidate’; The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 49, No. 1 (June 1962), pp. 67-84
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