Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 5, 1940. The Democratic ticket of incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace defeated the Republican ticket of businessman Wendell Willkie and senator Charles McNary, to be re-elected for an unprecedented third term in office. Until 1988, this was the last time in which the incumbent party won three consecutive presidential elections. It was also the fourth presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1860, 1904, 1920, 1944, and 2016.
The election was contested in the shadow of World War II in Europe, as the United States was finally emerging from the Great Depression. Initially, Roosevelt was unwilling to campaign for a third presidential term, but was driven by worsening conditions in Europe. He and his allies sought to defuse challenges from other party leaders such as James Farley and Vice President John Nance Garner. The 1940 Democratic National Convention re-nominated Roosevelt on the first ballot, while Garner was replaced on the ticket by Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace. Willkie, a dark horse candidate, unexpectedly defeated conservative Senator Robert A. Taft and Manhattan District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey on the sixth presidential ballot of the 1940 Republican National Convention.
Roosevelt, acutely aware of strong isolationist and non-interventionist sentiment, promised there would be no involvement in foreign wars if he were reelected."Roosevelt repeatedly promised that American boys would not have to fight overseas. At one point Willkie hearing Roosevelt make his pledge of "your boys are not going to be sent into a foreign war" Willkie, who had not previously run for public office, conducted an energetic campaign, managing to revive Republican strength in areas of the Midwest and Northeast. He criticized perceived incompetence and waste in the New Deal, warned of the dangers of breaking the two-term tradition, and accused Roosevelt of secretly planning to take the country into World War II. However, Willkie's association with big business damaged his cause, as many working class voters blamed corporations and business leaders for the Great Depression. Roosevelt led in all pre-election polls and won a comfortable victory; his margins, though still significant, were less decisive than they had been in 1932 and 1936.
Nominations Democratic Party
1940 Democratic Party ticket for Presidentfor Vice President 32ndPresident of the United States(1933–1945) 11thU.S. Secretary of Agriculture(1933–1940)Campaign3,250,555 votes707.5
In order of delegates and votes wonFranklin D. RooseveltJohn Nance GarnerCharles W. SawyerJames FarleyWilliam B. BankheadO. John RoggeMillard TydingsBurton K. WheelerJoseph C. O'MahoneyEllis E. PattersonCordell HullPaul V. McNuttU.S. President from New York (1933–1945)U.S. Vice President from Texas (1933–1941)Lt. Governor of Ohio (1933–1935)U.S. Postmaster Generalfrom New York(1933–1940)U.S. House Speakerfrom Alabama(1936–1940)U.S. Assistant Attorney Generalfrom New York(1939–1940)U.S. Senatorfrom Maryland(1927–1951)U.S. Senatorfrom Montana(1923–1947)U.S. Senatorfrom Wyoming(1934–1953)Lt. Governorof California(1939–1943)U.S. Secretary of Statefrom Tennessee(1933–1944)Administrator of the Federal Security Agencyfrom Indiana(1934–1945)3,214,555 votes691.5 426,641 votes69.5 283,952 votes52 76,919 votes38.5 196,508 votes22 20 16 8 6 48,337 votes0 0
+ Convention vote President Vice President Franklin D. Roosevelt 946 Henry A. Wallace 626 James Farley 72 William B. Bankhead 329 John Nance Garner 61 Paul V. McNutt 68 Millard Tydings 9 Alva B. Adams 11 Cordell Hull 5 James Farley 7 Jesse H. Jones 5 Joseph C. O'Mahoney 3 Alben W. Barkley 2 Prentiss M. Brown 1 Louis A. Johnson 1 Scott W. Lucas 1 Bascom N. Timmons 1 David I. Walsh 0.5
Throughout the winter, spring, and summer of 1940, there was much speculation as to whether Roosevelt would break with longstanding tradition and run for an unprecedented third term. The two-term tradition, although not yet enshrined in the Constitution, had been established by George Washington when he refused to run for a third term in 1796; other former presidents, such as Ulysses S. Grant in 1880 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 had made serious attempts to run for a third term, but the former failed to be nominated, while the latter, forced to run on a third-party ticket, lost to Woodrow Wilson due to the split in the Republican vote. President Roosevelt refused to state definitely whether he would run for a third term. He even indicated to some ambitious Democrats that he would not run. Two of them thus decided to seek the Democratic nomination. These were James Farley, his former campaign manager, and Vice President John Nance Garner. Garner was a Texas conservative who had come to disagree with Roosevelt's liberal economic and social policies, and declined to run for a third term as vice president.
However, as Nazi Germany swept through western Europe and menaced the United Kingdom in the summer of 1940, Roosevelt decided that only he had the necessary experience and skills to see the nation safely through the Nazi threat. He was aided by the party's political bosses, who feared that no Democrat except Roosevelt could defeat the popular Willkie.James MacGregor Burns Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (1956) pp 408–30.
At the July 1940 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Roosevelt easily swept aside challenges from Farley and Garner. Roosevelt picked Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace of Iowa to replace Garner on the ticket. An outspoken liberal who had been a Republican until he joined Roosevelt's cabinet, he met strong opposition from conservatives and party traditionalists. Wallace was also known as "eccentric" in his private life: some years earlier, he had been a follower of Theosophist mystic Nicholas Roerich. But Roosevelt insisted that without Wallace he would not run. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt came to Chicago to vouch for Wallace, and he won the vice-presidential nomination with 626 votes to 329 for House Speaker William B. Bankhead of Alabama.Richard Moe, Roosevelt's Second Act: The Election of 1940 and the Politics of War (2013).
Republican Party
1940 Republican Party ticket for Presidentfor Vice President President ofCommonwealth & Southern(1933–1940) U.S. Senator from Oregon(1917–1918, 1918–1944)Campaign
In order of delegates and votes wonWendell WillkieRobert A. TaftJerrold L. SeawellThomas E. DeweyArthur VandenbergHerbert HooverHanford MacNiderFrank GannettArthur H. JamesBusinessman from New York (1919–1939)U.S. Senatorfrom Ohio(1939–1953)President pro temporeof California(1939–1941)Manhattan District Attorneyfrom New York(1938–1941)U.S. Senatorfrom Michigan(1928–1951)Former U.S. Presidentfrom CaliforniaAssistant Secretary of War(1925–1928)Businessman from New York (1906–1957)Governorof Pennsylvania(1939–1943)21,140 votes633 516,428 votes310 538,112 votes44 1,605,754 votes11 100,651 votes69 votes9 2 1 1 Convention vote (6th Ballot before Shifts) President Vice President Wendell L. Willkie 633 Charles L. McNary 626 Robert A. Taft 310 Dewey Jackson Short 108 Thomas E. Dewey 11 Styles Bridges 2 Herbert Hoover 9 Hanford MacNider 2Frank Gannett1Arthur H. James1
In the months leading up to the opening of the 1940 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Republican Party was deeply divided between the party's isolationists, who wanted to stay out of World War II at all costs, and the party's interventionists, who felt that the United Kingdom needed to be given all aid short of war to prevent Nazi Germany from conquering all of Europe. The three leading candidates for the Republican nomination - Senator Robert A. Taft from Ohio, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg from Michigan, and District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey from New York - were all isolationists to varying degrees.Michael D. Bowen, The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party (2011).
Taft was the leader of the conservative, isolationist wing of the Republican Party, and his main strength was in his native Midwestern United States and parts of the Southern United States. Dewey, the District Attorney for Manhattan, had risen to national fame as the "Gangbuster" prosecutor who had sent numerous infamous Mafia figures to prison, most notably Lucky Luciano, the organized-crime boss of New York City. Dewey had won most of the presidential primaries in the spring of 1940, and he came into the Republican Convention in June with the largest number of delegate votes, although he was still well below the number needed to win. Vandenberg, the senior Republican in the Senate, was the "favorite son" candidate of the Michigan delegation and was considered a possible compromise candidate if Taft or Dewey faltered. Former President Herbert Hoover was also spoken of as a compromise candidate.
However, each of these candidates had weaknesses that could be exploited. Taft's outspoken isolationism and opposition to any American involvement in the European war convinced many Republican leaders that he could not win a general election, particularly as France fell to the Nazis in June 1940 and Germany threatened the United Kingdom. Dewey's relative youth—he was only 38 in 1940—and lack of any foreign-policy experience caused his candidacy to weaken as the Wehrmacht emerged as a fearsome threat. In 1940, Vandenberg was also an isolationist (he would change his foreign-policy stance during World War II) and his lackadaisical, lethargic campaign never caught the voters' attention. Hoover still bore the stigma of having presided over the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. This left an opening for a dark horse candidate to emerge.Susan Dunn, 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler-the Election Amid the Storm (Yale UP, 2013).
A Wall Street-based industrialist named Wendell Willkie, who had never before run for public office, emerged as the unlikely nominee. Willkie, a native of Indiana and a former Democrat who had supported Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 United States presidential election, was considered an improbable choice. Willkie had first come to public attention as an articulate critic of Roosevelt's attempt to break up electrical power monopolies.
Willkie was the CEO of the Commonwealth & Southern Corporation, which provided electrical power to customers in eleven states. In 1933, President Roosevelt had created the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which promised to provide flood control and cheap electricity to the impoverished people of the Tennessee Valley. However, the government-run TVA would compete with Willkie's Commonwealth & Southern, and this led Willkie to criticize and oppose the TVA's attempt to compete with private power companies. Willkie argued that the government had unfair advantages over private corporations, and should thus avoid competing directly against them.Steve Neal, Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie (1989)
However, Willkie did not dismiss all of Roosevelt's social welfare programs, indeed supporting those he believed could not be managed any better by the free enterprise system. Furthermore, unlike the leading Republican candidates, Willkie was a forceful and outspoken advocate of aid to the Allies of World War II, especially the United Kingdom. His support of giving all aid to the British "short of declaring war" won him the support of many Republicans on the East Coast of the United States, who disagreed with their party's isolationist leaders in Congress.