Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression, and Re-Election

By Nolan Rettig

When Herbert Hoover took office in 1928, he did so having won 58.1% of the popular vote while his opponent Al Smith had won only 40.9%. This was thanks largely to Hoover’s background as a humanitarian and his promise to uphold Prohibition, and while Smith won over most Catholic voters through his Irish Catholic background, anti-Catholic prejudice alienated him from the Protestant majority of the time. Even so, Hoover’s fortune quickly changed eight months into office, where his hands-off approach to the economy and enforcement of Prohibition were seen as aggravating factors in the worst economic depression in US history.

A collection of Hoover campaign pins and buttons on display at the Hoover-Minthorn House Museum. Image courtesy of Nolan Rettig.

1932 re-election poster. Image courtesy of Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College.

Despite having been Secretary of Commerce for the past eight years and a relief organizer for much longer, Hoover was a fiscal conservative at the end of the day and believed the President should serve as a soft power in times of economic crises. This limited his options as the Depression began to worsen, with agencies like the Reconstruction Financial Corporation (RFC), which helped bail out failing banks and businesses, only being implemented towards the end of his administration. Despite concessions like these and despite starting some of the biggest public works projects in American history, Franklin D. Roosevelt promised to do everything Hoover had and more, making ambiguous slogans like ‘we are turning the corner’ not being enough to keep disillusioned Americans from voting for FDR.

In the end, FDR won the election in a landslide, having won more votes than any previous candidate at 22,821,277, or 57.4% of the popular vote, whereas Hoover only won 15,761,254, or 39.6% of the vote. From there, Roosevelt drastically expanded programs like the RFC while creating many of his own, with Hoover’s contributions to ending the Depression being seen as negligible compared to those of FDR. As the Depression came to an end, however, many Americans softened toward Hoover and his policies, with the ‘Hoover Dam’ receiving its name in 1947 after being called the ‘Boulder Dam’ for its first thirteen years of operation.

A young girl showing her family’s support of Herbert Hoover in 1932. Image courtesy of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum and the National Archives.

Flawed as Hoover’s presidency was in the end, it would be unfair to characterize his reaction to the Depression as one of indifference, but rather caution. Few had a solid understanding of what was causing the Depression when it hit and fewer had solutions, with Hoover’s relief strategy being informed by his experience with natural disasters instead of economic ones. Altogether, the Hoover years were a low point for America because of the Depression, but few today would lay all the blame at his feet when it’s clear its causes were complex and would require nothing less than a World War to resolve.

A Hoover election pin from Oregon. Image courtesy of the George Fox University archives.

References

“1932: FDR’s First Presidential Campaign.” See How They Ran! FDR & His Opponents. Online exhibition by the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. Accessed March 1, 2025.

“Hoover Pin.” Herbert Hoover Artifacts. George Fox University Archives. Accessed March 1, 2025. 

Smith, Richard Norton and Timothy Walch. “The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover.” Prologue Magazine 36, no. 2, Summer 2004. Accessed March 1, 2025.