1928 United States presidential election in Utah

1928 United States presidential election in Utah

← 1924 November 6, 1928 1932 →
 
Nominee Herbert Hoover Al Smith
Party Republican Democratic
Home state California New York
Running mate Charles Curtis Joseph T. Robinson
Electoral vote 4 0
Popular vote 94,618 80,985
Percentage 53.58% 45.86%

County Results

President before election

Calvin Coolidge
Republican

Elected President

Herbert Hoover
Republican

The 1928 United States presidential election in Utah took place on November 6, 1928 as part of the 1928 United States presidential election. All contemporary forty-eight states took part, and state voters selected four voters to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Utah voted for Republican nominee Herbert Hoover, formerly Secretary of Commerce, over the Democratic nominee, four-time New York governor Al Smith. Mormon Utah was much less affected by anti-Catholic passion against Smith and his faith than either the Protestant Upper South or the secular Pacific Northwest: indeed the LDS hierarchy endorsed Smith when he won the Democratic nomination.[1] In fact, in the days before the election it was thought by pollsters that Smith would carry the state,[2] although neither Cox nor Davis nor La Follette had won a single county during the previous two elections. However, late swings gave the state to Hoover by a margin whose size increased in late counting.[2]

Nonetheless, the LDS endorsement did cause Utah to prove Smith's eleventh-strongest state – and his strongest outside the urban Northeast or the "Solid South" – voting 9.70 percent more Democratic than the nation at-large.[3] Smith divided the sizable 1924 La Follette vote with Hoover, and carried the ethnically diverse mining-based Carbon County by fourteen, and also won a five-point majority in Juab County in the state's west for the first Republican losses in any Utah county since 1916 when anti-war sentiment shifted the state to Woodrow Wilson.[4]

  1. ^ Archer, J. Clark and Taylor, Peter J.; Section and Party: A Political Geography of American Presidential Elections, from Andrew Jackson to Ronald Reagan p. 173 ISBN 0471100145
  2. ^ a b Clapper, Raymond; 'Hoover Deluge Sweep Higher: May Pass Mark Set by Harding; Smith Gets Greatest Popular Vote Ever Given Democrat but Makes Poor Showing on Electoral'; The Pittsburgh Press, November 7, 1928, p. 1
  3. ^ Counting the Votes; Utah
  4. ^ Menendez, Albert J.; The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004, p. 47 ISBN 0786422173