1940 United States presidential election in New Jersey

Summary

The 1940 United States presidential election in New Jersey took place on November 5, 1940. All contemporary 48 states were part of the 1940 United States presidential election. Voters chose 16 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.

1940 United States presidential election in New Jersey

← 1936 November 5, 1940 1944 →
 
Nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt Wendell Willkie
Party Democratic Republican
Home state New York New York
Running mate Henry A. Wallace Charles L. McNary
Electoral vote 16 0
Popular vote 1,016,808 945,475
Percentage 51.55% 47.93%

County Results

President before election

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democratic

Elected President

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democratic

New Jersey was won by the Democratic nominees, incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York and his running mate Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace of Iowa. Roosevelt and Wallace defeated the Republican nominees, corporate lawyer Wendell Willkie of New York and his running mate Senate Minority Leader Charles L. McNary of Oregon.

Roosevelt narrowly carried New Jersey with 51.55 percent of the vote to Willkie’s 47.93 percent, a margin of 3.62 percent.[1] Reflecting the closeness of the statewide result, Roosevelt and Willkie virtually split the state's 21 counties: Roosevelt won 11 counties to Willkie's ten. Roosevelt edged out Willkie statewide with decisive victories in some of the most heavily populated parts of the state, while keeping the results close in heavily populated counties that he lost.

In North Jersey, Roosevelt maintained his dominance in heavily populated Hudson County, part of the New York metropolitan area where the New Deal Coalition was very strong, breaking 60% of the vote in the county for the third election in a row. Roosevelt also won heavily populated Middlesex County with more than 60% of the vote, along with majorities in Mercer County, Passaic County, and rural Warren County. Willkie won the remaining counties of North Jersey, breaking sixty percent of the vote in Bergen County and Morris County.

Roosevelt performed much more strongly overall in South Jersey, winning majorities in 6 out of 8 of the southernmost counties in the state; his strongest county win there was urban Camden County, where he broke 60% of the vote. In South Jersey, Willkie won only rural Cape May County. Besides his victories in North Jersey, Willkie also won Monmouth County and Ocean County in the central portion of the state.

New Jersey by 1940 had become a closely divided swing state with a Republican lean, and its results in 1940 adhered to that pattern. Roosevelt had carried the state in the midst of both of his preceding nationwide landslides, although only by a very narrow margin in 1932. As Roosevelt decisively won re-election to an unprecedented third term, carrying 38 out of 48 states, his narrow margin of victory in New Jersey made the state about 6 points more Republican than the national average.

This is the most recent presidential election in which New Jersey voted to the left of neighboring New York, though only doing so by a very narrow 0.07% difference. This difference was nearly identical to the two states' results in the previous election as well, where New Jersey voted 0.09% to the left of New York. Prior to 1936, the last time New Jersey voted to the left of New York (except for 1912 when former Republican Theodore Roosevelt ran on the Bull Moose ticket, causing a split among otherwise Republican voters) was in 1892. In fact, from the founding of the Republican Party in 1854 through the aforementioned 1892 election, New Jersey voted to the left of New York in every presidential election except for 1872, the only election in that span where the Democratic Party did not directly nominate a candidate.

Results edit

1940 United States presidential election in New Jersey
Party Candidate Votes Percentage Electoral votes
Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt (incumbent) 1,016,808 51.55% 16
Republican Wendell Willkie 945,475 47.93% 0
Communist Earl Browder 6,508 0.33% 0
Socialist Norman Thomas 2,433 0.12% 0
National Prohibition Roger Babson 873 0.04% 0
Socialist Labor John W. Aiken 455 0.02% 0
Totals 1,974,214 100.0% 16

Results by county edit

County Franklin D. Roosevelt[2]
Democratic
Wendell Willkie[2]
Republican
Earl Browder[2]
Communist
Norman Thomas[2]
Socialist
Roger Babson[2]
National Prohibition
John W. Aiken[2]
Socialist Labor
Margin Total votes cast
# % # % # % # % # % # % # %
Atlantic 36,155 54.13% 30,551 45.74% 26 0.04% 33 0.05% 28 0.04% 5 0.01% 5,604 8.39% 66,798
Bergen 76,541 36.65% 131,588 63.01% 190 0.09% 379 0.18% 58 0.03% 67 0.03% -55,047 -26.36% 208,823
Burlington 26,574 55.50% 21,161 44.20% 13 0.03% 71 0.15% 53 0.11% 6 0.01% 5,413 11.31% 47,878
Camden 84,837 65.81% 43,480 33.73% 93 0.07% 337 0.26% 158 0.12% 14 0.01% 41,357 32.08% 128,919
Cape May 8,485 47.29% 9,429 52.55% 4 0.02% 10 0.06% 16 0.09% 0 0.00% -944 -5.26% 17,944
Cumberland 19,251 53.95% 16,322 45.75% 13 0.04% 23 0.06% 58 0.16% 13 0.04% 2,929 8.21% 35,680
Essex 154,363 44.87% 182,124 52.94% 6,556 1.91% 765 0.22% 139 0.04% 87 0.03% -27,761 -8.07% 344,034
Gloucester 20,284 53.22% 17,674 46.38% 11 0.03% 51 0.13% 82 0.22% 9 0.02% 2,610 6.85% 38,111
Hudson 208,429 65.85% 107,552 33.98% 255 0.08% 237 0.07% 9 0.00% 26 0.01% 100,877 31.87% 316,508
Hunterdon 7,872 43.25% 10,284 56.50% 2 0.01% 27 0.15% 12 0.07% 6 0.03% -2,412 -13.25% 18,203
Mercer 50,121 57.26% 37,190 42.49% 119 0.14% 85 0.10% 14 0.02% 4 0.00% 12,931 14.77% 87,533
Middlesex 67,140 61.59% 41,709 38.26% 69 0.06% 23 0.02% 6 0.01% 66 0.06% 25,431 23.33% 109,013
Monmouth 36,298 42.18% 49,675 57.73% 16 0.02% 29 0.03% 23 0.03% 6 0.01% -13,377 -15.55% 86,047
Morris 24,698 38.23% 39,720 61.47% 25 0.04% 117 0.18% 47 0.07% 5 0.01% -15,022 -23.25% 64,612
Ocean 8,762 39.50% 13,394 60.38% 18 0.08% 6 0.03% 2 0.01% 0 0.00% -4,632 -20.88% 22,182
Passaic 69,880 51.42% 65,523 48.21% 231 0.17% 184 0.14% 31 0.02% 58 0.04% 4,357 3.21% 135,907
Salem 12,244 59.92% 8,132 39.80% 15 0.07% 16 0.08% 26 0.13% 0 0.00% 4,112 20.12% 20,433
Somerset 16,490 44.86% 20,169 54.87% 36 0.10% 40 0.11% 10 0.03% 10 0.03% -3,679 -10.01% 36,755
Sussex 6,314 42.14% 8,642 57.67% 4 0.03% 7 0.05% 16 0.11% 1 0.01% -2,328 -15.54% 14,984
Union 70,737 46.45% 79,962 52.50% 1,116 0.73% 369 0.24% 52 0.03% 60 0.04% -9,225 -6.06% 152,296
Warren 10,929 50.69% 10,595 49.14% 8 0.04% 14 0.06% 12 0.06% 3 0.01% 334 1.55% 21,561
Totals 1,016,404 51.48% 944,876 47.86% 8,814 0.45% 2,823 0.14% 851 0.04% 446 0.02% 71,528 3.62% 1,974,214

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ "1940 Presidential General Election Results – New Jersey". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved November 30, 2013.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Our Campaigns; NJ US President Race, November 05, 1940