1928 United States presidential elections in Louisiana

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Nominee Al Smith Herbert Hoover Party Democratic Republican Home state New York California Running mate Joseph T. Robinson Charles Curtis Electoral vote 10 0 Popular vote 164,655 51,160 Percentage 76.29% 23.70%

Parish Results Smith   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90%   90–100%

President before election Calvin Coolidge Republican ElectedPresident Herbert Hoover Republican

The1928 United States presidential election in Louisiana took place on November 6, 1928, as part of the wider United States presidential election. Voters chose ten representatives, or electors, to theElectoral College, who voted forpresident andvice president.

Ever since the passage of a newconstitution in 1898,Louisiana had been a one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party. The Republican Party became moribund due to thedisenfranchisement of Black voters and the complete absence of other support bases, as Louisiana lacked upland or German refugee whitesopposed to secession.^[1] Despite this single-party dominance, non-partisan tendencies remained strong among wealthy sugar planters inAcadiana and within the business elite of New Orleans.^[2]

Following disfranchisement, the state's politics became dominated by a coalition of the New Orleans–based Choctaw Club of Louisiana andBlack Beltplanters.^[3] Opposition began to emerge with theSocialist Party in the lumbering parishes of the northern hills and Imperial Calcasieu in the late 1900s, and more seriously with theProgressive movement, chiefly in the southernsugar-growing parishes, in the 1910s. Conflicts with President Wilson'sUnderwood-Simmons Act^[4] allowedProgressiveWhitmell P. Martin^[a] to be elected tothe Third Congressional District in 1914, and in 1920 the racially less hardline^[5] Acadiana region turned to Republican candidateWarren G. Harding^[6] over disagreements on foreign policy andthe Nineteenth Amendment.^[7] Continued opposition to the Choctaw Club would elect former ProgressiveJohn M. Parker as governor at the beginning of 1920; however, Parker did not deliver his promised reforms, and Choctaw control returned temporarily with the 1924 election ofHenry L. Fuqua.^[8]

Louisiana's delegates tothe Democratic National Convention largely backed CatholicNew York GovernorAl Smith, who was opposed in the remainder of the South for his religion and opposition toProhibition.^[9] At the same time, the state Republican Party—like those of Mississippi and South Carolina, entirely a vehicle for Federal patronage—was undergoing a "lily white" takeover from Walter Cohen'sblack-and-tan faction, although blacks were not expelled from the party as occurred in Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia.^[10]

Unlike in the Upper South, Louisiana Democrats were controlled by fears that theRepublican nominee, formerSecretary of CommerceHerbert Hoover, supported racial equality.^[9] Although in the Protestant north andFlorida Parishes there was opposition to Smith's religion and views on Prohibition, this was overshadowed by the desire for loyalty to the one-party system as an instrument of white supremacy,^[11] a viewpoint supported by newly elected GovernorHuey Long.^[9] Moreover, identification with Smith's Catholicism was strong in Acadiana, where commitment to white supremacy was less intense.^[12]

Consequently, Smith and Arkansas SenatorJoseph T. Robinson won Louisiana with 76.29 percent of the popular vote, to 23.70 percent for Hoover andSenate Majority LeaderCharles Curtis of Kansas. Only in two parishes—Livingston andWashington, both proximate to the deeply anti-Catholic MississippiPine Belt andFlorida panhandle—did Hoover pass forty percent of the vote, while in many Acadian parishes Hoover underperformedCalvin Coolidge by over thirty points. Louisiana was Smith's third strongest state in the election, afterSouth Carolina and neighboringMississippi.^[13]

• United States presidential elections in Louisiana

• 1928 United States presidential election by state
• United States presidential elections in Louisiana
• 1928 Louisiana elections

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