1928 United States presidential election in the context of "1952 United States presidential election"

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933. A wealthy mining engineer before his presidency, Hoover led the wartime Commission for Relief in Belgium and was the director of the U.S. Food Administration, followed by post-war relief of Europe. As a member of the Republican Party, he served as the third United States secretary of commerce from 1921 to 1928 before being elected president in 1928. His presidency was dominated by the Great Depression, and his policies and methods to combat it were seen as lackluster. Amid his unpopularity, he decisively lost reelection to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

Born to a Quaker family in West Branch, Iowa, Hoover grew up in Oregon. He was one of the first graduates of the new Stanford University in 1895. Hoover took a position with a London-based mining company working in Australia and China. He rapidly became a wealthy mining engineer. In 1914, the outbreak of World War I, he organized and headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an international relief organization that provided food to occupied Belgium. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover to lead the Food Administration. He became famous as his country's "food dictator". After the war, Hoover led the American Relief Administration, which provided food to the starving millions in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Russia. His wartime service made him a favorite of many progressives, and he unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 1920 United States presidential election.

Alfred Emanuel Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was an American politician who served as the 42nd governor of New York from 1919 to 1920 and again from 1923 to 1928. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's presidential nominee in the 1928 presidential election, losing to Republican nominee Herbert Hoover in a landslide.

The son of an Irish American mother and a Civil War–veteran Italian American father, Smith was raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, near the Brooklyn Bridge. He resided in that neighborhood for his entire life. Although Smith remained personally untarnished by corruption, he—like many other New York Democrats—was linked to the notorious Tammany Hall political machine that controlled New York City politics during his era. Smith served in the New York State Assembly from 1904 to 1915 and was the speaker of the Assembly in 1913. He also served as the sheriff of New York County from 1916 to 1917. He was first elected governor in 1918, lost his 1920 bid for re-election, and was elected again in 1922, 1924, and 1926. Smith was the foremost urban leader of the efficiency movement in the U.S. and was noted for achieving a wide range of reforms as governor.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, and Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Obama became the first African American to be elected to the presidency.

Incumbent Republican president George W. Bush was ineligible to pursue a third term due to the term limits established by the Twenty-second Amendment; this was the first election since 1952 in which neither the incumbent president nor vice president was on the ballot, and the first since 1928 in which neither ran for the nomination. McCain secured the Republican nomination by March 2008, defeating his main challengers Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, and selected Palin as his running mate. The Democratic primaries were marked by a sharp contest between Obama and the initial front-runner, former first lady and Senator Hillary Clinton, as well as other challengers who dropped out before most of the primaries were held, including Senators John Edwards and Joe Biden. Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primary made her the first woman to win a major party's presidential primary. After a long primary season, Obama narrowly secured the Democratic nomination in June 2008 and selected Biden as his running mate.

Frank Orren Lowden (January 26, 1861 – March 20, 1943) was an American Republican Party politician who served as the 25th governor of Illinois and as a United States representative from Illinois. He was also a candidate for the Republican presidential nominations in 1920 and 1928.

Born in Sunrise Township, Minnesota, Lowden practiced law in Chicago after graduating from the University of Iowa. He emerged as a local Republican leader and served in the House of Representatives from 1906 to 1911. He served as Governor of Illinois from 1917 to 1921, earning wide notice for his reorganization of state government and his handling of the Chicago race riot of 1919.

Romanism is a derogatory term for Roman Catholicism used when anti-Catholicism was more common in the United States.

The term was frequently used in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Republican invectives against the Democrats, as part of the slogan "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" (referencing the Democratic Party's constituency of Southerners and anti-Temperance, frequently Catholic, working-class immigrants). The term and slogan gained particular prominence in the 1884 presidential campaign and again in 1928, in which the Democratic candidate was the outspokenly anti-Prohibition Catholic Governor of New York Al Smith.

Joseph Taylor Robinson (August 26, 1872 – July 14, 1937) was an American politician who served as United States Senator from Arkansas from 1913 to 1937, serving for four years as Senate Majority Leader and ten as Minority Leader. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the state's 23rd governor, and was also the Democratic vice presidential nominee in the 1928 presidential election.

After studying law at the University of Virginia, Robinson returned to Arkansas, winning election to the Arkansas General Assembly. He won election to the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1903 to 1913. He won election as governor of Arkansas in 1912, but resigned from that position in 1913 to take a seat in the Senate. In the Senate, Robinson established himself as a progressive and strong supporter of President Woodrow Wilson. Robinson served as the chairman of the 1920 Democratic National Convention and won election as the Senate Minority Leader in 1923. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1924 election and was nominated as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1928. The Democratic ticket of Al Smith and Robinson lost in a landslide to the Republican ticket of Herbert Hoover and Charles Curtis.

Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill Jr. (December 9, 1912 – January 5, 1994) was an American Democratic Party politician from Massachusetts who served as the 47th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987, the third-longest tenure in history and the longest uninterrupted tenure. He represented northern Boston in the House from 1953 to 1987.

Born in North Cambridge, Massachusetts, O'Neill began campaigning at a young age by volunteering for Al Smith's campaign in the 1928 presidential election. After graduating from Boston College, he won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he became a strong advocate of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. He became Speaker of the Massachusetts House in 1949 and won election to the United States House of Representatives in 1952 to succeed John F. Kennedy.

Herbert Hoover's tenure as the 31st president of the United States began on his inauguration on March 4, 1929, and ended on March 4, 1933. Hoover, a Republican, took office after a landslide victory in the 1928 presidential election over Democrat Al Smith of New York. His presidency ended following his landslide defeat in the 1932 presidential election by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, after one term in office.

Hoover was the third consecutive Republican president, and he retained many of the previous administration's policies and personnel, including Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. Hoover favored policies in which government, business, and labor worked together to achieve economic prosperity, but he generally opposed a direct role for the federal government in the economy. Seeking to address an ongoing farm crisis, Hoover signed the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929. Despite growing public resistance to Prohibition, Hoover increased federal enforcement of Prohibition. In foreign affairs, Hoover favored non-interventionism in Latin America and pursued disarmament policies with the London Naval Treaty.