1928 United States presidential election

thumb|197x197px|[[Calvin Coolidge, the incumbent president in 1928, whose second and only full term expired on March 4, 1929]]

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 1928. In a landslide victory, the Republican ticket of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and Senator Charles Curtis defeated the Democratic ticket of New York Governor Al Smith and Senator Joseph T. Robinson.

After President Calvin Coolidge declined to seek reelection, Hoover emerged as the Republican Party's frontrunner. As Hoover's party opponents failed to unite around a candidate, Hoover received a large majority of the vote at the 1928 Republican National Convention. The strong state of the economy discouraged some Democrats from running, and Smith was nominated on the first ballot of the 1928 Democratic National Convention. Hoover and Smith had been widely known as potential presidential candidates long before the 1928 campaign, and both were generally regarded as outstanding leaders. Both were newcomers to the presidential race and presented in their person and record an appeal of unknown potency to the electorate. Both faced serious discontent within their respective parties' membership, and both lacked the wholehearted support of their parties' organization.

In the end, the Republicans were identified with the booming economy of the 1920s, and Smith, a Roman Catholic, suffered politically from anti-Catholic sentiment particularly in the Solid South, his opposition to Prohibition, and his association with the legacy of corruption by Tammany Hall. Hoover won a third straight Republican landslide and made substantial inroads in the traditionally-Democratic Solid South by winning several states that had not voted for a Republican since the end of Reconstruction. Smith carried the five states of the Deep South, his running mate's home state of Arkansas, and the Northeastern states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Hoover's victory made him the first president born west of the Mississippi River, and he remains the most recent Cabinet secretary to win a presidential election. Charles Curtis became the first (and thus far the only) Native American vice president, and the first vice president with acknowledged non-European ancestry. This was the last Republican presidential victory until 1952. As of 2026, this is the most recent presidential election in which the winning ticket was the same party as the incumbent without being the incumbent President or Vice President, and the most recent presidential election in which the incumbent president did not seek reelection despite being eligible for another term.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#E81B23; width:200px;"| Herbert Hoover|

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#E81B23; width:200px;"| Charles Curtis|

|- style="color:#000; font-size:100%; background:#FFD0D7;"

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for Vice President

| center|200x200px

| U.S. Secretary of Commerce (1921–1928)

| U.S. Senator from Kansas (1907–1913 & 1915–1929)

|colspan=2|: 208 votes : 837 votes 2,045,928 votes

|colspan=2|200x200px

Other candidates

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%"

|- †

| colspan="7" style="text-align:center; width:1400px; font-size:120%; color:white; background:;" |Candidates in this section are sorted by their highest vote count on the nominating ballot

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;" |Frank Orren Lowden

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;" |Charles Curtis

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;" |James Eli Watson

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;" |George W. Norris

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;" |Guy D. Goff

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;" |Calvin Coolidge

! scope="col" style="width:3em; font-size:120%;" |Frank B. Willis

|center|120x120px

|center|121x121px

|center|120x120px

|- style="text-align:center"

|Governor of Illinois (1917–1921)

|U.S. Senator from Kansas (1924–1929)

|U.S. Senator from Indiana (1916–1933)

|U.S. Senator from Nebraska (1913–1943)

|U.S. Senator from West Virginia (1925–1931)

|U.S. President from Massachusetts (1923–1929)

|U.S. Senator from Ohio (1921–1928)

|- style="text-align:center"

|: 111 votes

In the few primaries that mattered, Hoover did not perform as well as expected, leaving him with fewer than half the number of pledged delegates that he needed to win the nomination. Lowden in turn only had half the number of delegates that Hoover did, leaving it looking unlikely that the first rounds of voting would produce a majority for any candidate. Attempts were made to sound out Coolidge and Vice President Charles G. Dawes as to whether they would be willing to enter the race and break a potential deadlock between Hoover and Lowden, but both Coolidge and Dawes remained aloof. The matter was unexpectedly resolved when the convention voted to adopt a platform that repudiated the McNary–Haugen Farm Relief Bill, in turn causing Lowden to withdraw his candidacy in protest, and leaving no obvious challenger to Hoover. The only real competition that remained came from Senator Curtis, whose campaign was left with far too little time to win over the Lowden supporters.

The Republican Convention was held in Kansas City, Missouri from June 12 to 15 and nominated Hoover on the first ballot. With Hoover disinclined to interfere in the selection of his running mate, the party leaders were at first partial to giving Dawes a shot at a second term, but when that information leaked, Coolidge sent an angry telegram that said that he would consider a second nomination for Dawes, whom he hated, a "personal affront". To attract votes from farmers who were concerned about Hoover's pro-business orientation, the nomination was instead offered to Curtis. He accepted and was nominated overwhelmingly on the first ballot. Curtis was the first candidate of Native American ancestry nominated by a major party for national office.

In his acceptance speech eight weeks after the convention ended, Hoover said: "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of this land... We shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this land." That sentence would haunt Hoover during the Great Depression.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:left"

|+The balloting

!Presidential Ballot!! !!Vice Presidential Ballot!!

!Herbert Hoover !!837!! Charles Curtis !!1,052

!Frank Orren Lowden!!74!! Herman Ekern !!19

!Charles Curtis !!64!! Charles G. Dawes !!13

!James Eli Watson !!45!! Hanford MacNider !!2

!George W. Norris !!24!! !!

!Guy D. Goff !!18!! !!

!Calvin Coolidge !!17!! !!

!Charles G. Dawes !!4!! !!

!Charles Evans Hughes !!1!! !!

Democratic Party nomination

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#3333FF; width:200px;"| Al Smith|

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#3333FF; width:200px;"| Joseph Taylor Robinson|

| style="width:3em; font-size:100%; color:#000; background:#C8EBFF; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; font-size:100%; color:#000; background:#C8EBFF; width:200px;"|for Vice President

| center|200x200px

| 42nd Governor of New York (1919–1920 & 1923–1928)

| U.S. Senator from Arkansas (1913–1937)

| colspan=2 |Campaign

|colspan=2|: 410 votes

The 1928 Democratic National Convention was held in Houston, Texas, on June 26 to 28, and Smith became the candidate on the first ballot.

The leadership asked the delegates to nominate Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, in many ways Smith's political polar opposite, to be his running mate, and Robinson was nominated for vice-president.

Smith was the first Roman Catholic to gain a major party's nomination for president, and his religion became an issue during the campaign. Many Protestants feared that Smith would take orders from church leaders in the Vatican in making decisions affecting the country.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:left"

|+The Balloting

!Presidential Ballot!! 1st Before Shifts !! 1st After Shifts !!Vice Presidential Ballot!! 1st

!Al Smith !!724.67!!849.19!! Joseph Taylor Robinson !!1,035.17

!Cordell Hull !!71.84!!50.84!! Alben W. Barkley !!77

!Walter F. George !!52.5!!52.5!! Nellie Tayloe Ross !!31

!James A. Reed !!48!!52!! Henry Tureman Allen !!28

!Atlee Pomerene !!47!!3!! George L. Berry !!17.5

!Jesse H. Jones !!43!!43!! Dan Moody !!9.33

!Evans Woollen !!32!!7!! Duncan U. Fletcher !!7

!Pat Harrison !!20!!8.5!! John H. Taylor !!6

!William A. Ayres !!20!!3!! Lewis Stevenson !!4

!Richard C. Watts !!18!!18!! Evans Woollen !!2

!Gilbert Hitchcock !!16!!2!! Joseph Patrick Tumulty !!1

!A. Victor Donahey !!5!!5!! !!

!Houston Thompson !!2!!2!! !!

!Theodore G. Bilbo !!0!!1!! !!

Other candidates

Socialist Party

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#f1f1f1;" colspan="30"|70px|center|link=Socialist Party of America<big>1928 Socialist Party ticket</big>

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#8B0000; width:200px;"| Norman Thomas|

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#8B0000; width:200px;"| James H. Maurer|

|- style="color:#000; font-size:100%; background:#F08080;"

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for Vice President

| center|200x200px

| Presbyterian Minister from New York

| State Representative from Pennsylvania (1915–1919)

Held in the Finnish Socialist Hall in New York City, the eighth Socialist Party Convention met on the thirteenth of April. James Maurer, a former State Representative, President of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor and then Councilman for the city of Reading, was widely considered the frontrunner in the months before the convention met. For his boomers however, Maurer stood that his duties as councilman precluded the possibility of any national tour that would be required of his nomination for the presidency, and this declination was made definitive on the tenth of April. Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister who had been one of Maurer's boomers and had himself made it known that he was not a candidate for the Socialist nomination rather swiftly became the new frontrunner, and plans were made for a draft effort. Thomas and Maurer were nominated unanimously for president and vice president respectively, with both men accepting their nominations. The only trouble arose on the question of Prohibition, where there remained a split in the party between those who supported the Eighteenth Amendment and those, like Convention Chair Victor Berger, who preferred that it be handled on a state-by-state basis. In the end it was agreed that the party remain silent on the issue of Prohibition.

Workers (Communist) Party

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#f1f1f1;" colspan="30"|65px|center|link=Workers Party of America<big>1928 Workers Party ticket</big>

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#D50000; width:200px;"| William Z. Foster|

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#D50000; width:200px;"| Benjamin Gitlow|

|- style="color:#000; font-size:100%; background:#ff3333;"

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for Vice President

| center|200x200px

| Chairman of the party from Massachusetts

| State Assemblyman from New York (1918–1918)

Held in the Mecca Temple in New York City, the second Workers Party Convention met on the twenty-fifth of May. Jay Lovestone served as the convention's keynote speaker, denouncing the Democratic, Republican and Socialist Parties and claiming that the Communists would turn the next "imperialist war" into a civil war. Party Chair William Foster was named as the party's candidate for the presidency while Benjamin Gitlow, a former opponent of Foster's within the party, was named as its candidate for vice president. Scott Nearing was also considered a possible contender for either position on ticket. A platform was adopted which, in addition to calling for American workers to overthrow the capitalistic system of government, also demanded the enactment of social insurance, the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, a five-hour workday, the withdrawal of troops from Nicaragua and China, and the recognition of the Soviet Union.

Socialist Labor Party

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#f1f1f1;" colspan="30"|65px|center|link=Socialist Labor Party of America<big>1928 Socialist Labor Party ticket</big>

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#DD051D; width:200px;"| Verne L. Reynolds|

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#DD051D; width:200px;"| Jeremiah D. Crowley|

|- style="color:#000; font-size:100%; background:#e3364a;"

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for Vice President

|200x200px

| Steamfitter from Michigan

| Activist from New York

Held in New York City, the tenth Socialist Labor Party Convention met on the twelfth of May. Initially the ticket was a duplicate of the one nominated four years prior, Frank Johns of Oregon for the presidency and Verne Reynolds of Michigan for Vice President; however Johns, while campaigning in Bend, Oregon, died while attempting to rescue a young boy who had fallen into the river shortly after one of his opening campaign events. With their standard-bearer having passed, the executive committee of the party tendered the presidential nomination to Reynolds, with the place of vice presidential nominee being filled by Jeremiah Crowley of New York. Speaking of the "decay of the Capitalistic System", Reynolds campaigned on the idea of Industrial democracy.

Prohibition Party

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#f1f1f1;" colspan="30"|65px|center|link=Prohibition Party<big>1928 Prohibition Party ticket</big>

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#FF00FF; width:200px;"| William F. Varney|

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#FF00FF; width:200px;"| James A. Edgerton|

|- style="color:#000; font-size:100%; background:#ffa6ff;"

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for Vice President

| center|200x200px

| Insurance Agent from New York

| Poet and Philosopher from Virginia

Held at the La Salle Hotel in Chicago, the fifteenth Prohibition Party Convention met on the tenth of July. Dr. D. Leigh Colvin and other Prohibitionists had found both the Republican and Democratic planks regarding Prohibition as unsatisfactory, and there was open discussion of nominating a ticket despite the continued reversals the party had suffered since 1920. The name of former Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania was bandied about as a potential contender, though there were those like Colvin who wanted to take advantage of the Democrat's nomination of a Wet Catholic by nominating a Dry Southern Democrat to the head of the ticket in the hopes of carrying one of the Southern states; William Gibbs McAdoo, Senator Robert Owen of Oklahoma, and former IRS Commissioner Daniel Roper were other names considered for a draft. A merger with the Farmer-Labor Party was contemplated for a time, and a committee was appointed which named a potential ticket of Gifford Pinchot for President and former Governor William Ellery Sweet of Colorado for Vice President; however neither man responded to inquiries whether they would accept the nomination, and eventually both the Prohibition and Farmer-Labor Parties tabled motions calling for fusion.

There remained immense pressure within the party to name Herbert Hoover as their choice for president despite his dithering on the issue of Prohibition enforcement in the eyes of the stricter Drys, and indeed when the balloting for the presidential nomination commenced Hoover was found to be the second most popular choice of the delegates. Those opposed to Hoover rallied on the second ballot however behind frontrunner William Varnery, an insurance salesman and party regular from New York. James Edgerton, a Virginian native who had headed the Jefferson-Lincoln League in the failed effort to fuse the Prohibition and Farmer-Labor Parties, was nominated for the vice presidency. An olive branch was still offered to Hoover however, with the Prohibition Party promising to withdraw their ticket and endorse his candidacy were he make a public declaration in favor of Prohibition, that they would uphold the Volstead Act, and that they would present legislation to better enforce both during their term as president. Indeed, there remained a concerted effort to withdraw the ticket from the race, resulting in a meeting by the Party National Executive Committee on whether Varney should drop out. Varney himself was opposed to this plan, and in a narrow vote, four to three, the effort to effectively endorse Hoover for the presidency failed. Still, there remained a concern that the ticket might potentially spoil the race and accidentally result in Smith's election to the presidency, and so care was taken to avoid any repeat of 1884; Prohibition Party electors were not filed in New York, and Varney and Edgerton were to confine their campaigning to the Solid South and the Border States, reasoning that many Dry Democrats there might still vote for Smith unless they were given a third option.

Farmer-Labor Party

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%; text-align:center;"

| style="background:#f1f1f1;" colspan="30"|70px|center|link=Farmer-Labor Party<big>1928 Farmer-Labor Party ticket</big>

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#36a236; width:200px;"| Frank Elbridge Webb|

! style="width:3em; font-size:135%; background:#36a236; width:200px;"| LeRoy R. Tillman|

|- style="color:#000; font-size:100%; background:#66FF99;"

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for President

| style="width:3em; width:200px;"|for Vice President

|center|200x200px

| Colonel from California

| Businessman from Georgia

Held in Chicago, the third Farmer-Labor Party Convention met on the tenth of July. A merger with the Prohibition Party was contemplated for a time, and a committee was appointed which named a potential ticket of Gifford Pinchot for president and former Governor William Ellery Sweet of Colorado for Vice President; however neither man responded to inquiries whether they would accept the nomination, and eventually both the Farmer-Labor and Prohibition Parties tabled motions calling for fusion. To run alongside Norris the party had named William J. Vereen of Georgia, a cotton textile manufacturer, but refused to consider his nomination under any circumstances once the press had brought it to his attention. Some months later the presidential nomination was tendered to Colonel Frank Elbridge Webb of California, with the vice presidential nomination being offered to Senator James Reed of Missouri after Webb rejected the idea of potentially running with Senator James Heflin of Alabama; as with Vereen, Reed had no prior knowledge of his impending nomination and wholly rejected it, purportedly saying "Who in hell is Webb?". A third man, Dr. Henry Alexander of North Carolina was then nominated in Reed's stead, but on September 18 Alexander requested that his name be withdrawn from the ticket and he later endorsed Al Smith for the presidency. At some point after LeRoy Tillman, a nephew of the late Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina, was nominated in Alexander's stead.

General election

Fall campaign

Anti-Catholicism was a significant burden for Smith's campaign. Protestant ministers warned that he would take orders from the Pope, whom many Americans sincerely believed would move to the United States to rule the country from a fortress in Washington, DC. A popular joke of the time was that Smith sent a one-word telegram after the election to Pope Pius XI saying, "Unpack." Beyond the conspiracy theories, a survey of 8,500 Southern Methodist Church ministers found only four who supported Smith, and the northern Methodists, Southern Baptists, and Disciples of Christ were similar in their opposition. Many voters who rejected the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan, which had declined from its peak in the mid 1920s until the 1928 campaign partially revived it, justified their opposition to Smith on their belief that the Catholic Church was an "un-American" and "alien culture" that opposed freedom and democracy.

An example was a statement issued in September 1928 by the National Lutheran Editors' and Managers' Association that opposed Smith's election. The manifesto, written by Dr. Clarence Reinhold Tappert, warned about "the peculiar relation in which a faithful Catholic stands and the absolute allegiance he owes to a 'foreign sovereign' who does not only 'claim' supremacy also in secular affairs as a matter of principle and theory but who, time and again, has endeavored to put this claim into practical operation." The Catholic Church, the manifesto asserted, was hostile to American principles of separation of church and state and of religious toleration. Groups circulated a million copies of a counterfeit oath, claiming that fourth-degree Knights of Columbus members swore to exterminate Freemasons and Protestants and to commit violence against anyone if the church ordered. Smith's opposition to Prohibition, a key reform promoted by Protestants, also lost him votes, as did his association with Tammany Hall. Because many anti-Catholics used the issues to cover for their religious prejudices, Smith's campaign had difficulty denouncing anti-Catholicism as bigotry without offending others who favored Prohibition or disliked Tammany corruption.

Contemporary Prohibition activists said that their main problem with the Democratic candidate was his faith and not any political view. Bob Jones Sr., a prominent Protestant pastor in South Carolina, said: "I'll tell you, brother, that the big issue we've got to face ain't the liquor question. I'd rather see a saloon on every corner of the South than see the foreigners elect Al Smith president". A Methodist newspaper in Georgia called Catholicism "a degenerate type of Christianity," while Southern Baptist churches ordered their followers to vote against Smith, claiming that he would close down Protestant churches, end freedom of worship and prohibit reading the Bible. Charles Hillman Fountain, a Protestant writer, insisted that Catholics should be barred from holding any office. Farris states that "More disturbing than the ridiculous and the dangerous was the respectable anti-Catholicism", as contemporary newspapers and Protestant churches tried to mask their anti-Catholicism as genuine concern. Protestant activists insisted that Catholicism represented an alien culture and medieval mentality, claiming that Catholicism was incompatible with American democracy and institutions. Catholics were portrayed as reactionary despite being more left-wing than mainstream American Protestant congregations at the time. However, in many southern states with sizable African American populations, the vast majority of whom could not vote due to poll taxes, restricted primaries, and hostile local election officials, it was widely believed that Hoover supported integration or at least was not committed to maintaining segregation. This overcame opposition to Smith's campaign in areas with large nonvoting black populations. Mississippi Governor Theodore G. Bilbo claimed that Hoover had met with a black member of the Republican National Committee and danced with her. Hoover's campaign quickly denied the "untruthful and ignoble assertion".

Smith's religion helped him with Roman Catholic New England immigrants, especially Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans, which may have explained his narrow victories in traditionally-Republican Massachusetts and Rhode Island and his narrow loss in his home state of New York, where previous Democratic presidential candidates had lost by double digits, but Smith lost by only 2%.

Results

right|thumb|upright=1.81|Results by county explicitly indicating the margin of victory for the winning candidate. Shades of red are for Hoover (Republican) and shades of blue are for Smith (Democratic), and shades of green are for "Other(s)" (Non-Democratic/Non-Republican), gray indicates zero recorded votes, and white indicates territories not elevated to statehood.

The total vote exceeded that of 1924 by nearly eight million, which was nearly twice the vote cast in 1916 and nearly three times that of 1896. Every section in the Union increased its vote although the Mountain, East South Central and West South Central States did so least of all. The greatest increases were in the heavily populated (Northeastern) Mid-Atlantic and East North Central States, where more than 4,250,000 more votes were cast, more than half of the nationwide increase. There was an increase of over a million each in New York and Pennsylvania.

Much of the increase could be attributed to women voting in ever increasing numbers since gaining the national vote in 1920.

Hoover won 200 counties in the Southern United States while Smith won 122 traditionally Republican counties in the Northern United States, with 77 of those counties being majority Catholic. Warren G. Harding had won in all twelve cities with populations above 500,000 in the 1920 election, but Smith won in Cleveland, Milwaukee, New York City, San Francisco, and St. Louis, and lost in Baltimore and Pittsburgh by less than 10,000 votes. Hoover won in the traditionally Democratic Birmingham, Dallas, and Houston. Smith was the first Democratic nominee in the 20th century to win a majority of the twelve largest cities in the country. The net vote totals in the twelve largest cities shifted from Republican to Democratic with Harding having won by 1,540,000 in 1920, Coolidge by 1,308,000 in 1924, while Smith won by 210,000. Samuel Lubell wrote in The Future of American Politics that Franklin D. Roosevelt's victory in the 1932 election was preceded by Smith's increased vote totals in urban areas.

Smith's results in the cities in the election improved upon John W. Davis' results in the 1924 election. The Democratic vote in Boston rose from 35.5% to 66.8%, in Milwaukee from 9.7% to 53.7%, in Saint Paul, Minnesota from 10.1% to 51.2%, San Francisco from 6.4% to 49.4%, in Cleveland from 9.1% to 45.6%, in Chicago from 20.3% to 46.5%, in Pittsburgh from 8.7% to 42.4%, in Philadelphia from 12.1% to 39.5%, in Minneapolis from 6.3% to 38.8%, in Detroit from 7.1% to 36.8%, and in Seattle from 6.6% to 31.9%. In the boroughs of New York City the vote percentages rose from 33.6% to 67.7% in The Bronx, 39.6% to 60.8% in Manhattan, 31.9% to 59.5% in Brooklyn, 31% to 53.4% in Queens, and 42% to 53.4% in Staten Island. He improved in all of those cities from James M. Cox's results in 1920. The Hoover vote was greater than the Coolidge vote in 2,932 counties; it was less in 143 of the comparable counties. The 21,400,000 votes cast for Hoover also touched the high-water mark for all votes for a presidential candidate until then and were an increase of more than 5,500,000 over the Coolidge vote four years earlier.

{|class="wikitable"

|States/districts won by Smith/Robinson

|States/districts won by Hoover/Curtis

|}<div style="overflow:auto">

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:right"

! colspan=2 |

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| Herbert Hoover Republican

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| Al Smith Democratic

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| Norman Thomas Socialist

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| William Foster Communist

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="3"| Verne Reynolds Socialist Labor

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| Margin

! style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| State Total

! align=center | State

! style="text-align:center; font-size: 60%" data-sort-type="number" | electoral votes