[2] 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's victory made him the first president born west of the Mississippi River, and he is the most recent former member of the Cabinet to win a presidential election.

The leading candidates were Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, former Illinois Governor Frank Orren Lowden and Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis.

[4][5] 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.

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.

Owing to the economic prosperity in the country and rapidly fading public memory of the Teapot Dome scandal, the Democratic Party's prospects looked dim.

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 was declination was made definitive on April tenth.

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.

[18] 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.

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.

[21] 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.

[22] 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.

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.

[25] 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.

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.

[28][29] 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.

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.

Many voters who sincerely rejected bigotry and the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan, which had declined during the 1920s until the 1928 campaign 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.

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."

[35] 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.

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.

[34] Scott Farris notes that the anti-Catholicism of the American society was the sole reason behind Smith's defeat, as even contemporary Prohibition activists would admit 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.

[37] William Allen White, a renowned newspaper editor, warned that Catholicism would erode the moral standards of America, saying that "the whole Puritan civilization which has built a sturdy, orderly nation is threatened by Smith."

[38] 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.

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.

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%.

He received more votes than any previous candidate of the Republican Party in every state except five: Rhode Island, Iowa, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

[42] Historian Allan Lichtman notes that since the sole defining issue of the election was anti-Catholicism, it radically realigned states' voting patterns.

[42] Third-party support sank almost to the vanishing point, as the election of 1928 proved to be a two-party contest to a greater extent than any other in the Fourth Party System.