Introduction

This module depicts the electoral votes for president from 1920 through 1936. That period witnessed two massive shifts. The first shift was economic. Relative prosperity during the 1920s, driven by the new consumerism, gave way at the end of the decade to abject depression, driven by a stock market crash in 1929, worldwide turmoil, and internal inequities. The second shift, reflected clearly in this set of maps, was political. Voters supported the Republicans through the years of consumer prosperity, then shifted abruptly to the Democrats after the onset of the so-called Great Depression. By 1936, the Democratic party had clearly replaced the Republican party as the dominant political organization in the country.