had been a powerfully Republican state during the 1920s, although it did not possess the isolationist sentiment found in Appalachia or the Upper Midwest. In 1928 large-scale anti-Catholic voting swept a state substantially part of the Ozark “Bible Belt”, so that whereas Kansas had been less anti-Democratic than more northerly Plains states in 1920 and 1924, it became Herbert Hoover’s best state in the entire nation in 1928. The 1930s saw a major drought affect the Great Plains, producing dramatic swings against incumbent President Hoover in 1932 election, which were more overwhelming in Kansas than in states further north, though less so than in the traditionally Democratic Southern Plains that had been vehemently against Al Smith’s Catholic faith in 1928. During the first term of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Kansas twice elected Republican GovernorAlfred Mossman Landon, who proved himself a skilled administrator, who was critical of the excesses of the Agricultural Adjustment Act and was the only GOP governor re-elected in 1934. Landon was to have relatively little trouble gaining the Republican nomination against the popular Roosevelt in 1936.
Vote
Although some observers thought that Landon could bring back the West and Plains which had completely deserted Herbert Hoover in 1932, Landon was not able to achieve this to any significant degree. Although he carried more than thirty counties that had supported Roosevelt in the 1932 election, Landon did not make the hoped-for gains there, and any gains he did make were offset by substantial losses in Kansas’ larger cities, where Landon’s later anti-New Deal rhetoric was unpopular. Landon consequently improved on Hoover’s 1932 showing by only 1.71 percentage points even in a state that had known him as Governor, although Kansas was Landon’s fourth-best state by vote percentage behind Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire. This would be the second-last time Kansas would support a Democratic Presidential candidate – the only subsequent Republican to lose the state being Barry Goldwater in another landslide loss in 1964. , this is the last occasion the following counties have voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate: Chase, Cheyenne, Decatur, Graham, Greenwood, Harper, Kiowa, Lincoln, Marion, Meade, Mitchell, Morris, Rawlins, Rooks, Scott and Seward.
