To Change or Not to Change Horses: The World War II Elections

To Change or Not to Change Horses:The World War II Elections

HELMUT NORPOTHStony Brook University

Folk wisdom counsels voters to stick with leaders in time of a war, though recent experiencesuggests otherwise. Taking advantage of largely unexplored polls from the 1940s (Gallup andNational Opinion Research Center), this research probes vote choices in the World War IIelections. Of particular interest is a counterfactual question that asked respondents how theywould have voted if there was no war. In addition, the aggregate vote in presidential contestsover time is used to estimate how the White House party fares in wartime elections. PresidentRoosevelt received a special premium in electoral support from the wartime condition in both1940 and 1944. This premium was earned through popular support for war-related issues.Hence, in wartime elections where such support is lacking voters may be inclined to change horses.

It is not best to swap horses when crossing streams.—Abraham Lincoln (New York Times 1864)

Seeing it through in Vietnam cost me 20 points in the polls.—Lyndon Johnson, 1968 (Mueller 1973, 196)

“Wartime election” sounds like an oxymoron. Many countries do not give votersthe opportunity to vote under wartime conditions. Even an established democracy likeBritain suspended elections during both world wars. Wartime conditions impose uniqueconstraints on the general public, just like on the economy, that are absent in peacetime.So when elections are being held in wartime, as has been the case in the United Statesthroughout its history, voters may be expected to follow a different calculus than inpeacetime. As Lincoln’s admonition suggests, voters would not be wise to change leadersin the middle of a war. Going to war is expected to generate a “rally ‘round the flag”effect. Faced with an external enemy, the adversaries of domestic politics suspend theirdisputes and close ranks behind the country’s leader, designated by the U.S. Constitutionas commander in chief of the armed forces. It would seem unpatriotic for citizens safelyout of harm’s way not to do so.

Helmut Norpoth is a professor of political science at Stony Brook University. He is coauthor of The AmericanVoter Revisited and has published widely on topics of electoral behavior. His current research focuses on public opinionin wartime.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I would like to thank Ole Holsti, Leonie Huddy, Gary Jacobson, David Peterson, AndrewSidman, Martin Steinwand, and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Presidential Studies Quarterly 42, no. 2 (June) 324© 2012 Center for the Study of the Presidency

Yet in recent years, politics has not stopped at the water’s edge. The party that gotthe United States into war has not fared especially well at the polls. To wit, Republicanslost the White House in 2008, as well as the Congress two years earlier, in large partbecause of voter discontent with the war in Iraq. A generation or so earlier, LyndonJohnson saw his popularity decline and his party lose the White House in the 1968election amidst widespread opposition to the war in Vietnam. To observers with evenlonger memory, this recalled the fate of Harry Truman during the Korean War and theDemocrats’ loss of the White House in the 1952 election. Is the folk wisdom cited byAbraham Lincoln mistaken about wartime voting?

This article examines the first wartime elections in the age of survey research. Thedata come from an October 1940 Gallup poll and a 1944 election study conducted bythe National Opinion Research Center (NORC). Technically, of course, the United Stateswas not at war in 1940, but war in Europe, as well as Asia, loomed large as an issue inAmerican politics then. Both of those surveys have languished in undeserved obscurity.Note that they picked Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) as the winner in the respective electionswith uncanny accuracy, avoiding the pitfalls of the notorious 1948 election. Each of thesesurveys offered respondents a counterfactual choice touching on the wartime aspectof those elections: What if there was no war, whom would you vote for (have voted for)?The surveys also queried respondents about war-related policies and FDR’s handlingof the war. To complement the survey evidence, a time series analysis of the vote inpresidential elections is conducted to determine how the White House party fares inwartime elections throughout American history, and especially during World War II.

Political Behavior in Wartime

Folk wisdom aside, the key rationale for voter reluctance to change leaders inwartime is the “rally ’round the flag” phenomenon (Mueller 1973). Military interventionsform the top tier of rally events, defined by Mueller as an event that “(1) is internationaland (2) involves the United States and particularly the president directly; and it must be(3) specific, dramatic, and sharply focused” (1973, 209).1 A wealth of studies has probedthe surge in leader approval in the wake of rally events (Callaghan and Virtanen 1993;Edwards and Swenson 1997; Kernell 1978; Lai and Reiter 2005; MacKuen 1983;Nickelsburg and Norpoth 2000; Ostrom and Simon 1985). Not all rally events, to besure, pack an equal punch (Lian and Oneal 1993). It takes front-page coverage in the NewYork Times for an event to generate substantial gains in presidential approval (Oneal andBryan 1995). The expectation of such a gain may tempt leaders to engage in militaryactions (Ostrom and Job 1986) or “saber rattling” (Wood 2009). Whatever the initialsuccess of attempts to exploit the rally effect may be, it is in the nature of rally-inducedboosts of public support that they quickly evaporate. Their staying power is not expectedto be strong enough to secure victory in the next election.

1. Oddly enough, Mueller (1973) did not include the U.S. entry into World War II in his list of rallypoints, perhaps because his analysis of presidential popularity did not cover the tenure of FDR.

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One rally that lingered long enough to help the commander in chief win reelectionwas the one sparked by the 9/11 attacks (Hetherington and Nelson and 2003; Norpothand Sidman 2007). Another occurred in British politics as a result of the Falklands Warof 1982. The rally ’round Prime Minister Thatcher remained strong enough to assurea Conservative victory in the general election of 1983 (Norpoth 1992). What set thesetwo rallies apart is that they arose in response to an attack on the home country or aterritorial possession abroad. In both cases, but especially after 9/11 in the United States,the general public rallied instantly, even before any military operation had been launched.Such a rally may have great staying power, enough to carry through to the next election.We would expect the same effect for U.S. entry into World War II sparked, as it was, bythe Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

While the rally effect boosts public morale in wartime, the human toll exacted bywar is said to sap it. The latter reaction is one of the causal mechanisms of the democratic-peace theory (Bueno de Mesquita, and Siverson 1995; Ray 1995). During the wars inKorea and Vietnam, the cumulative count of U.S. casualties closely tracks popularopinion about these wars (Mueller 1973, 61). As the toll climbed, support for eachof those wars fell, and so did the electoral prospects of the respective commanders inchief and their parties (Kernell 1978; Ostrom and Simon 1985).2 Even in World War IIAmerican casualties may have taken a toll on presidential approval (Baum and Kernell2001; Kriner 2006). Was the war perhaps less of a winning ticket for FDR than is widelybelieved?

Given the remoteness of foreign affairs for most citizens, some scholars depictthe mass public as dependent on elite cues for opinions in this domain (Berinsky 2007;Brody 1991; Holsti 2004; Zaller 1992). When the opinion leaders of the country,including both major parties in Congress, are united in their support of military actionabroad, the general public will accept that decision and see no reason to change horses.But when Congress is divided and the media give ample voice to dissent over a war,ordinary Americans will follow suit and feel no reluctance to change leaders in wartime.Aside from political leaders, the tenor of media coverage can determine whether thegeneral public supports the president at moments of international crisis (Groeling andBaum 2008). The intensity of news coverage alone, regardless of tenor, may garner publicsupport for war (Althaus and Coe 2011). By focusing on the war at the expense of otherconcerns, the media would “prime” Americans to be patriotic in their views of the war.“Priming” effects have been demonstrated to affect a variety of political attitudes as wellas voting (Iyengar and Kinder 1987; Kam and Ramos 2008; Krosnik and Kinder 1990;Mendelberg 2001).

Others, however, credit the general public for judging the merits of militaryinterventions, based on the objective of the mission ( Eichenberg 2005; Jentleson 1992).This would seem an easy call when military action is taken in response to an undeniableattack on one’s own country, as happened in Pearl Harbor 1941, and is sanctioned by a

2. The evidence, however, is highly suspect. The use of a cumulative casualty count introduces adeterministic trend that is bound to produce a spurious correlation with a trend in presidential popularity.The cumulative count of any other phenomenon would do just the same.

326 | PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / June 2012

practically unanimous declaration of war. Aside from the righteousness of the cause, theprospect of success is an important ingredient of war sentiment. Expectation of victoryhas proved to be a powerful determinant of public support for military operations(Eichenberg 2005; Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009; Larson 1996). Though it is often noteasy to judge the prospect of victory, shaped by psychological factors and media coverageas much as by material gains ( Johnson and Tierney 2006), this may not have proved adifficult task for the American public in World War II. News coverage of the war wastightly censured. The war was the only news and little, if any, bad news reached theAmerican public back home. So how did Americans make up their minds in the WorldWar II elections? What surveys are available to shed light on this question, and how werethey conducted?

Opinion Surveys in the 1940s

To begin with, opinion surveys in the late 1930s and early 1940s were conductedby means of “quota-controlled sampling” (Berinsky 2006). While the Gallup Organiza-tions refers to it as “modified probability” sampling, it does depart from the strictstandards of probability sampling. Respondents for a poll were selected through “acombination of . . . a purposive design for the selection of cities, towns, and rural areas,and the quota method for the selection of individuals within such selected areas” (RoperCenter n.d., 2). Within the sample areas, respondents were chosen so as to meet certainquotas defined by age, gender, and socioeconomic status. Within these guidelines, thechoice of a particular respondent was up to the interviewer, who was allowed to pick themin their homes or on the street. There was no requirement for the interviewer to makethese selections by any random procedure.

What is more, the Gallup sample design was set to represent the South andNon-South according to the votes cast in presidential elections, not the voting-agepopulation. Hence, southerners and blacks are underrepresented in these polls. Whilethis may skew the distribution of opinions of the American public, it would seem to dolittle harm if vote choice is the focus of inquiry. Both the 1940 and 1944 surveys usedin this research pick the winner of the respective elections, deviating by less than twopercentage points from the actual results.3 The inquiry into the failure of the polls in the1948 election did not lay the major blame on quota sampling (Mosteller et al. 1949).

The data for the 1940 election come from a Gallup poll that was conducted October7-12, 1940, with a total of 3,021 respondents.4 For the 1944 election, the data areprovided by an NORC survey that has a pre-post panel design with a total of 2,030respondents interviewed both times. The questionnaire of this survey includes a muchlarger range of items than is covered in a typical poll. It uses open-ended questions about

3. The two-party split in the 1940 Gallup poll (FDR 53.4%, Willkie 46.6%) closely matches theactual vote division (55.0-45.0). In 1944, the NORC survey, in its postelection wave, gives FDR 52.7% andDewey 47.3%, as compared to 53.8% and 46.2% in the official tally (of the two-party vote).

4. The Gallup Poll #1940-0214, “The Johnson Act/Presidential Election,” had several forms (ver-sions). Forms K and T include the “what-if” vote question. The dataset was obtained from the Roper CenterArchive, Storrs, Connecticut.


motivations for vote choice and turnout; candidate evaluations on a variety of issuesand social groups; party identification; ideological orientation, and more. Given thenational scope of the sample, the panel design, and the wide range of the questionnaire,this survey should rank as the first “national election study.” It nonetheless produced nobook, journal article, or other publication.5 The greatest exposure these data have receivedis in the recurring studies of American elections by Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde(2010, chap. 5); the 1944 NORC data serve as the starting point of charting the socialdivisions of the vote in presidential elections to the present. Yet neither this survey northe 1940 Gallup poll has ever been used to examine voting in wartime.

The 1940 and 1944 Vote: What If No War?

Though technically not a wartime election, the presidential contest in 1940 wasfought under wartime conditions. War in Europe was the dominant topic of the electioncampaign. Supporters of an unprecedented third term for FDR in 1940 made their caseprecisely with the wartime rationale, “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream”(Burke 1971, 369). Polls at that time devoted a great deal of attention to opinions onforeign policy issues (Cantril 1967). It was quite common to do so with counterfactualquestions that asked respondents how they would vote under several war scenarios. Theresponses, of course, cannot be taken at face value but require corroboration from othertypes of evidence. Still do the responses to the what-if vote question at least suggest thatAmericans may have altered their presidential vote preferences because of the war? Anddid they do so to such an extent as to reverse the outcome of those elections?

Less than a month before the 1940 election, the Gallup poll asked Americans howthey would vote for president “if there were not war in Europe?” The responses, which aretabulated against the standard vote intention in Table 1, reveal that a substantial numberof respondents would have changed their vote. Most of the shifting involves losses for

5. The 1944 NORC data were used extensively in two unpublished manuscripts, Korchin (1946)and Ziff (1948). Dennis (1970, 826-27) and Mueller (1970, 29-30) make brief references to it in footnotes.The dataset was obtained from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSRStudy #7210), Ann Arbor, Michigan.

TABLE 1Vote Intention and Hypothetical Vote in the Absence of War, 1940 Election

If there were no war,would vote for

Intended Vote

FDR Willkie Undecided Total Percent

FDR 1,212 29 26 1,267 42.8%Willkie 188 1,247 69 1,504 50.9%Undecided 72 20 94 186 6.3%Total 1,472 1,296 189 2,957 100%Percent 49.8% 43.8% 6.4% 100% —

Source: Gallup poll, October 7-12, 1940 (#1940-0214, Forms K and T)


FDR (188 to Willkie and 72 to undecided), while losses for Willkie are light (29 toFDR and 20 to undecided). Removing war from the electoral calculus does not producerandom changes in vote intentions. The sitting president suffers five times as manydefections as does the opposition candidate. The wartime condition, even in the form ofa war that the United States has not entered yet, appears to boost the electoral fortunesof the president in office. While FDR defeats Willkie by six points in the standard voteintention contest, he loses this contest to Willkie by eight points in the absence of war.

In 1944, the NORC asked Americans, in the postelection wave of its election study,how they would have voted if the war was over. Unlike the 1940 Gallup poll, the NORCsurvey queried only FDR voters about their hypothetical vote in case of no war, the logicbeing that the only horse subject to change was the one with White House markings.If the 1940 findings are any guide, it does not seem likely that many Dewey voterswould have switched their vote to FDR in that case. The responses to the what-if questionin 1944 reveal that enough voters (148) would have changed their vote to reverse theoutcome of the election and hand victory to Dewey. As shown in Table 2, Dewey wouldhave defeated FDR by 56-44 instead of FDR winning 53- 47 over Dewey, using roundedpercentages.6

Answers to a hypothetical question, of course, do not prove beyond a doubt thatthe outcome would have been different in real life. What are some of the characteristicsof the potential vote switchers that make it more certain that they would have followedthrough with their hypothetical behavior in an election without war? The 1944 NORCstudy queried respondents with an open-ended question about the reasons for their votechoices.7 When answering that question, two-thirds of the potential FDR defectorsnamed “the war” as their reason for voting for FDR. Note the sequence order of thequestions in the survey. Respondents were asked about their presidential vote, thenabout their reasons for the vote, and after that how they (FDR voters) would have votedif the war was over. The question about reasons for the vote pertains to the vote theyreported to have cast, not the hypothetical vote (see Table 3). Citing the “war” as a reason

6. Allowing for Dewey-FDR defections of the same relative magnitude as found in 1940 forWillkie-FDR defections would alter the vote breakdown in the what-if contest slightly to 54.6-45.4 in favorof Dewey.

7. Such material is unavailable for the 1940 election. The October 1940 Gallup poll included anopen-ended question about reasons for the vote, but the coding scheme has been lost.

TABLE 2Reported Vote and Hypothetical Vote in the Absence of War, 1944 Election

If war was over, would havevoted for Voted for FDR Voted for Dewey Total Percent

FDR 704 —* 704 43.6%Dewey 148 764 912 56.4%Total 852 764 1616 100%Percent 52.7% 47.3% 100% —

* Dewey voters were not asked about their hypothetical vote in case the war was over.Source: National Opinion Research Center (NORC) 1944 pre-post election study (ICPSR Study #7210).


for choosing FDR was twice as frequent among potential FDR defectors as it was amongconsistent FDR voters. Removing the war from their calculation would eliminate theoverriding motivation of these voters to stick with the commander in chief. The sub-group of potential FDR defectors who cite the war as their main motive is large enoughto swing the election to Dewey by a still comfortable margin.

Further evidence comes from the partisan composition of this group. The 1944NORC study includes a party-identification question, while the 1940 Gallup pollasked about congressional vote intention, which is taken as a measure of partisanship. Inboth years, as shown in Table 4, barely half of the potential FDR defectors professeda Democratic partisanship. Many of them would be deterred from following throughwith their hypothetical vote for Dewey instead of FDR. Yet the other half made up ofRepublicans and Independents (or undecided) did not face such a block. What presiden-tial vote would one expect the potential FDR defectors to cast in a normal election basedsolely on their partisan composition? Assuming that partisanship translates into a presi-dential vote at the same rate as found in the rest of the sample, the normal vote for the

TABLE 3Presidential Vote Patterns in 1944 by Reasons Cited for Vote

Reason for Vote Consistent FDR Voters Potential FDR Defectors Dewey Voters

The War 35 65 0Foreign Policy 5 9 1Past Record 36 12 18Group Associations 13 3 5Party Affiliation 3 2 9“Time for a Change” 0 0 51Other 8 9 16Total 100% 101% 100%(N) (704) (148) (764)

Note: Consistent FDR voters said they voted for FDR and would have voted for him if the war was over.Potential FDR defectors said they voted for FDR but would have voted for Dewey if the war was over.

TABLE 4The Partisan Division of Potential FDRDefectors

Partisanship 1940 1944

Democrat 47 49Republican 30 18Independent/Undecided 23 34Total 100% 101%(N) (254) (148)

Note: The measure of partisanship in 1940 is based onthe question about “voting for Congressman,” and in1944 on the question, “Do you consider yourself aDemocrat, Republican, or something else?” The “Inde-pendent” category was volunteered by respondents.


group of potential FDR defectors would be 58-42 favor of FDR in 1940 and 61-39 in1944. According to these estimates, FDR might hold on to a slight majority of potentialdefectors but lose enough (about four in 10) in the absence of war to fall short of victoryin both 1940 and 1944.

Taken at face value, the responses to the counterfactual vote question (What if therewas no war?) hand a comfortable victory to the opposition candidates Willkie and Deweyin the 1940 and 1944 elections, respectively. The wartime condition apparently awardedthe sitting president a critical electoral boost that assured him victory instead. Controlsfor the most important issue and partisanship diminish that boost somewhat but stillleave intact the finding that in the wartime elections of 1940 and 1944, a significantportion of the electorate reported to be reluctant to “change horses in midstream.” Howtypical is this behavior for wartime elections? Does the presidential party invariablyregister electoral benefits in wartime elections in American history? Setting aside thesurvey material for a moment the focus turns to the vote in the aggregate.

The Wartime Election Ledger

To determine which electoral contests throughout American history qualify aswartime elections, one first needs to settle on a definition of war. Without much doubt,this would include any military conflict that the United States entered by meansof a formal declaration of war: the War of 1812, the Mexican War of 1846-48, theSpanish-American War of 1898, and the two world wars. Beyond those cases, numerousother U.S. military actions are widely considered “wars,” including the one with thehighest human toll, the Civil War. The operations of the U.S. military in Afghanistansince 2001 and Iraq since 2003 carry the “war” label as did the interventions in Vietnamand Korea. Most of them were undertaken with a specific authorization by Congress touse force such as the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. In most of them the United Statessuffered casualties in excess of 1,000 killed, one of the standards used by the Correlates-of-War project for defining a war (Singer 1972). Combining the formal with the actual,this study defines war as a military operation that (1) is based on a specific authorizationby Congress or (2) entails casualties of more than 1,000 killed in action.

Any presidential election that is held during such a “war” is considered a “wartimeelection.” Excluded are presidential contests that take place after a war has been settled.This stipulation, unfortunately, removes from consideration the Mexican War as well asthe Gulf War of 1991. With those wars having been settled before the next election, theproverbial river has been crossed and the question of whether or not to change horses ismoot. At the same time, included in the list of wartime elections are also those in whichthe question of American entry into a major war is the dominant issue of the campaign.Such elections, for all practical purposes, are held under wartime conditions. Besides the1940 election, this condition also covers the 1916 election. It was one in which Wilsoncampaigned on the theme, “He Kept Us Out of War” (Link and Leary 1971, 316). Inboth of those campaigns war loomed large for the American public, and the U.S. wouldenter the on-going war soon afterwards.


The track record of the White House party in wartime elections is a simple gaugeto assess the impact of war on the vote. But it is a misleading one since it does not controlfor any other factors affecting the vote. A rough way to apply such a control is by isolatingpredictable features of presidential elections over time. Students of cycles in presidentialpolitics have identified a distinctive pattern of the two-party vote division over time(Midlarsky 1984; Norpoth 2002).8 Whenever one major party takes over the WhiteHouse from the other, the newly dominant party typically holds on to the office in theimmediately following election. After two terms in office, however, the chances of thepresidential party to hold on the White House, with a new candidate, are no better thaneven. This cyclical dynamic would seem to be rooted in the two-term limit in presidentialelections, which was obeyed as a matter of tradition until it was codified as a constitu-tional amendment (Norpoth 2002). The vote gains and losses of the White House party,calculated as deviations from the cyclical expectation, are displayed for wartime electionsin Figure 1.9

More often than not in American history, wartime elections produced unexpectedvote gains for the White House party.10 Turning to the cases of special interest inthis article, the 1940 and 1944 elections each generated substantial gains for the WhiteHouse party. The electoral gain in 1944, in particular, is so huge that it spells thedifference between electoral victory and defeat for FDR. Though falling short of guar-anteeing FDR’s reelection in 1940, the vote gain that year for FDR turns what wouldotherwise have been a fairly close contest into a comfortable victory for the president.The findings of the aggregate analysis corroborate the counterfactual findings that thewartime condition awarded the president a substantial electoral boost in his quests forreelection in 1940 and 1944.

The aggregate findings also show that the presidential party suffered unexpected votelosses in some wartime elections. It is worth noting that in three of those four instances, thepresident in charge of the war did not run for reelection (1952, 1968, and 2008). So it mightappear that American voters have almost never changed presidential horses in wartime. Buttwo of those incumbents entered the election year as candidates for reelection and then

8. The dynamic has the form of a second-order autoregressive process, with the following parameterestimates and standard errors for elections from 1828 to 2008:

VOTE VOTE VOTE( ) . . ( ) . ( )

(. ) (. ) (. )

t t t= + − − −49 2 52 1 47 2

87 13 11

VOTE is the Democratic percentage of the two-party vote in presidential elections (n = 46). All parameterestimates are statistically significant beyond the .001 level, and the Ljung-Box Q-test indicates that nosignificant autocorrelation remains in the residuals. The standard error of residuals equals 5.15.

9. The Spanish-American War is flagged with an asterisk (*). Technically, this war was concludedbefore the 1898 election was held, but the resulting occupation of the Philippines provoked an insurrectionthat U.S. forces were still fighting, with considerable casualties, during the 1900 election.

10. The election of 1812 could not be included because of lack of popular voting. For the elections of1864 and 1916, a different method had to be used to estimate vote gains/losses. The 1864 election excludedthe Confederate South. So the vote change must be measured against an 1860 vote that also excludes thestates of the Confederacy. Moreover, both the 1864 and 1916 elections followed ones with extremely largeincidents of third-party voting, which renders comparisons of the two-party vote dubious. So the votepercentages for those elections are based on the total vote, not the two-party vote.


withdrew. Both Truman in 1952 and Johnson in 1968 fared poorly in the polls and in earlyprimaries amidst growing opposition to the wars in Korea and Vietnam respectively. Thosevoters, at least, ignored the folk wisdom against switching horses in the middle of a war.They also appeared to be on the verge of doing so in 2004. The estimate in Figure 1 suggeststhat Bush won reelection with a vote diminished by war. Though common, the electoralboost for apresident inwartime isnot automatic, as the “rally”phenomenon in timesof crisisimplies. Does it depend on public sentiment toward the war?

War Sentiment in the 1940 and 1940 Elections

Using an issue of public policy, whether in wartime or peacetime, for makinga voting decision is anything but simple. For many voters this is an arduous chorethat requires mastering a series of steps (Campbell et al. 1960, Lewis-Beck et al. 2008).Voting your policy preferences is not for everyone (Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde 2010).In one sense, war may be an easy issue to handle. It is a matter of high public concern thatis bound to generate strong feelings among voters. And given the president’s role ascommander in chief, he is closely identified with one side of the issue. Yet in anothersense, voters may find war a more difficult issue to handle. Public opinion on war may beswayed by patriotism and government propaganda. Meanwhile the opposition faces aquandary: dissent from the government and risk appearing unpatriotic, or support the

FIGURE 1. Adjusted Vote Gain/Loss of White House Party in Wartime Elections.


government’s course and provide no alternative to the voters. What is more, an ongoingwar asks voters not just to take a stand on the issue itself, but also to evaluate theconsequences. It is one thing to support a military intervention abroad at a perilousmoment for the nation and another to be impressed with the progress of the intervention.Research on the 2004 election has tracked several pathways in which the Iraq Warimpinged on the decision to reelect Bush or vote for Kerry (Abramson et al. 2007; Gelpi,Reifler, and Feaver 2007; Lewis-Beck et al. 2008, chaps. 3 and 4; Norpoth and Sidman2007; Weisberg and Christenson 2007).

War as an Electoral Issue in 1940 and 1944

In the 1940 election, when the United States was not yet at war, the fighting abroadnonetheless was the dominant issue. War in Europe confronted the United States with achoice between strict neutrality, as advocated by the isolationists, and intervention onbehalf of Britain and other foes of Nazi-Germany short of outright American entry intothe fighting. Through speeches and actions, FDR took several steps in 1940 to aid Britain(“Destroyers-for-Bases Deal”) and to enhance American preparation for war (SelectiveService Act). By the time of the 1940 election, the critical question for how the votemight tip was whether the American electorate supported such an interventionist courseor was still wedded to isolationism. The Republicans admittedly did not nominate anisolationist for president in 1940, but it is fair to assume that the president was far betterknown for an interventionist policy than a novice in national politics like Willkie couldhave been. By the time of the 1944 election, the issue of isolationism vs. interventionismwas a moot point. Three years of fighting instead raised questions such as how the warwas going or how well the president was handling it.

Let us first turn to the group of potential FDR defectors, those who reported that inthe absence of war they would have changed their (intended) vote to FDR’s Republicanopponent in the 1940 and 1944 elections. As Table 5 shows, in the 1940 survey they split2-1 in favor of aiding Britain, the policy pursued by FDR.11 In the 1944 survey, they

11. Support for aiding Britain was ascertained through answers to one question each in two sub-samples. The October 1940 Gallup poll asked one subsample (Form K) about allowing Britain to borrowmoney from the U.S. government, and the other subsample (Form T) about selling Britain airplanes on creditsupplied by the U.S. government.

TABLE 5Attitudes toward War among Potential FDR Defectors

1940 1944

Aid to Britain Winning the War Making Peace

Favor 61 FDR better 79 84Opposed 33 Dewey better 4 8No Opinion 6 No Diff./No Opin. 17 7Total 100% Total 100% 99%(N) (257) (N) (148) (148)


are practically unanimous in giving FDR the nod (over Dewey) for winning the war. Alsonote that a related question about the postwar period gives FDR a similar advantage insecuring a lasting peace. Hence, most of those voters held attitudes on issues related to warand peace that were consistent with a vote for FDR instead of his Republican opponenteach time. In the absence of war most of these voters would have lacked a key motive forsticking with FDR. But other factors may have kept them in the FDR fold anyhow.

War Sentiment and Vote Choice in 1940

To parcel out the effect of war-related attitudes on the vote in the World War IIelections, we turn to the full samples of the surveys. The group of potential FDR defectorshas no vote variance; they all voted (or intended to vote) for FDR, and they all would havedefected in the absence of war. The 1940 survey limits the range of controls to socialcharacteristics such as social class, religion, and urban-rural residence, among others.These three are the ingredients of the “Index of Political Predisposition” that wasintroduced by the authors of the pioneering voting study, The People’s Choice (Lazarsfeld,Berelson, and Gaudet 1948, chap. 3); it so happens that their study was conducted in1940 as well, albeit in a community rather than the nation. Given the national scope ofthe Gallup poll, race and southern region were added to the list of controls. Social class,religion, and southern region prove to be substantial and significant predictors of thevote, as shown in Table 6. These factors, along with opinions about aid to Britain,correctly predict the vote intention of 67% of the voters in the 1940 survey.12

With the ingredients of partisan predisposition held constant, attitudes aboutaiding Britain in the war against Nazi Germany come through with a strong effect on thevote choice between FDR and Willkie.13 The probability of voting for FDR was only .37for an opponent of aiding Britain while it was .54 for a supporter of aid (see Figure 2). Ifthat sounds low for a supporter of aid, it must be noted that these vote probabilities applyto a typical voter (a Protestant of average social class from outside the South), whosegeneral proclivity is more Republican than Democrat. They would all be substantiallyhigher for a Catholic or a southerner of average social class. But the vote gap separatingsupporters from opponents of aid to Britain would remain.

Most important for FDR’s reelection prospect in 1940, aiding Britain was thepopular option in 1940. Isolationism was waning. Supporters of aid to Britain outnum-bered opponents about 3-2 in the October 1940 Gallup poll. Had the balance of opinionbeen the reverse, or just any less supportive of aiding Britain, this issue would have hurtFDR’s reelection prospect in 1940, ceteris paribus. War in Europe gave FDR an electoralboost that year by generating a public groundswell for a policy of aiding Britain in thewar. FDR himself, of course, took a leading role in weaning the American public from

12. Preliminary tests showed that the estimates for urban-rural residence as well as race were smalland statistically insignificant, so both were dropped from further consideration.

13. It is conceivable that the causal flow of this relationship runs the other way around. A popularpresident “persuades” voters who like him to adopt his policy positions. FDR did rise in approval between1939 and 1940, but that was largely due to international factors (Hitler’s invasion of Poland, France, and theBattle of Britain). It could not have come from the economy, which was stuck in recession, with unemploy-ment hovering at 15% in those years.


TABLE 6Estimates of Vote Models, 1940 and 1944 Elections

1940 Election

Independent Variables Coefficient S. E.Social Class 0.41*** .03Religion 1.02*** .11South 1.73*** .18Attitude about Aid to Britain 0.34*** .05

Constant -2.52*** .17Correctly Predicted 67%N 2789

1944 Election

Independent Variables Coefficient S. E.Winning the War 0.80*** 0.20Making Peace 0.88*** 0.17Post-War Jobs 0.89*** 0.15Balancing the Budget 0.98*** 0.16Business-Labor Relations 1.18*** 0.14Race Relations 0.42* 0.17

Constant -10.73*** 0.59Correctly Predicted 93%N 1592

*p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001Note: The coefficients are logit estimates. The dependent variable is the reported vote in 1944 (Roosevelt orDewey), and vote intention in 1940 (Roosevelt or Willkie).Source: Gallup poll, October 7-12, 1940 (#1940-0214, Forms K and T); National Opinion Research Center,1944 Election Study, (ICPSR #7210).

FIGURE 2. FDR Vote Probability by British-Aid Attitude in 1940 Election.


isolationism and persuading it to endorse an interventionist course. Yet, without war inEurope, that issue would not have arisen or produced such a favorable groundswell in theAmerican public.

In the absence of war, the 1940 campaign might have focused on economic issues.Here the news was not very good for FDR and his party. The American economy hadslipped back into a recession, for which Democrats paid dearly in the 1938 midtermelection. At 15%, the unemployment rate in 1940 was still higher than it had been fouryears earlier. Republicans certainly would have hammered the Democrats on this point.It is impossible to determine how economic or other issues affected the vote in the 1940election. The October Gallup poll did not query voters about the economy or any otherdomestic concerns; its only concern was with the aid-to-Britain issue.

War Sentiment and Vote Choice in 1944

For the 1944 election, in contrast, the NORC election study probed attitudes abouta full range of issues and did so by relating issues to presidential candidates. The formatwas to ask respondents whether they thought “FDR or Dewey would do a better job” ofhandling a given issue:

• Balancing the budget• Winning the war• Making a lasting peace• Providing jobs after the war• Settling race relations• Getting business and labor to work together

Byanoverwhelmingmargin, aswas showninTable 5, theAmericanpublicgivesFDRthe nod on winning the war; he has proved himself as commander in chief. This is hisstrongest issue, followed by making a lasting peace and providing jobs. Where FDR trailsDewey in public assessment is on fiscal responsibility (balancing the budget), while the twoare close on handling business-labor relations as well as race relations. The American publicis not giving the president blanket approval on all issues but proves quite discriminatingin its issue verdict. Other than the issue of jobs, war and peace constitutes the singularadvantage for FDR in the 1944 election. And the advantage on jobs owes to the wartimeeconomy, which practically eliminated unemployment soon after U.S. entry in the war.

With opinions on all the other issues held constant, the opinion on who is thebetter candidate to win the war comes through with a strong and significant effect on thepresidential vote in 1944 (Table 6). The probability of voting for FDR is .67 for someonewho picks FDR as the better candidate for winning the war, compared to .29 for someonewho picks Dewey (Figure 3). These probabilities apply to a typical voter with an averagescore on all the other issue measures. Given the extremely close fit of the vote model,correctly accounting for the choices of 93% of voters in the 1944 survey, the confidencebands around those probability estimates are quite narrow.

Most decisive for the electoral outcome, public attitudes on war-related issuesskewed heavily in FDR’s favor. In the 1940 election, the American public backed his


policy of aiding Britain in its war against Germany, while in 1944 it was faith in hisconduct as a wartime commander in chief. Short of these war-induced advantages, FDR’sreelection prospects would have been imperiled. Holding those attitudes constant atthe neutral level, the vote equation would predict a narrow defeat for FDR in 1940 (with49.8% of the two-party vote) and a more clear-cut defeat in 1944 (with 46.1%).14 IfAmerican voters felt reluctant to change horses in those elections, it was because theytrusted the one with White House markings to get them through the perils of wartime.Polls stopped asking about the prospect of victory once the American public had reacheda consensus in late 1943 that the Allies were winning the war (Cantril 1967, 48). Withsuch confidence in victory, voters had more than enough reason to stick with theircommander in chief in the next election.

War Sentiment in Other Elections

Not all wartime presidents prove capable of inspiring this trust. The White Houseparty has lost elections during wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. Granted, these were allinstances where the wartime president was not on the ballot for reelection (1952, 1968,and 2008). In each of these elections the prospects of the wartime presidents nonethelesswould have been in grave peril. Both Truman and Johnson declined to seek reelection afterfaring poorly in early primaries. Opposition to the ongoing wars in Korea and Vietnam,respectively, diminished the popularity of those presidents and their electoral prospects.By early 1952, the Gallup poll showed only 37% in support of U.S. intervention in Korea,

14. These vote predictions are based on the coefficients for the independent variables provided inTable 6, but with everyone’s response to Aid to Britain set to “No Opinion” for the 1940 election, andeveryone’s responses to winning the war and making a lasting peace set to “No Difference/No Opinion” forthe 1944 election.

FIGURE 3. FDR Vote Probability by Victory Assessment in 1944 Election.


and by early 1968, only 41% did so for the Vietnam War (Mueller 1973, 45-54). Thesenumbers did not improve throughout the election years. The defeat of the White Houseparty in the presidential elections of 1952 and 1968 derived in large part from dissatis-faction with an on-going war (Campbell et al. 1960, chap. 3; Converse et al. 1969). Bothof those elections register with unexpected vote losses in the cyclical model. So does the2008 election, where a large majority of voters (63%) in the exit poll expressed disap-proval of the Iraq War (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/). When thepublic has lost faith in a war, “It’s Time for a Change” sounds a lot more appealing than“Don’t Change Horses in Midstream.”

None of the military interventions undertaken since World War II managed to holdon to the broad and deep public support that swept FDR to electoral victory in 1944.Even the wars in American history before then may not have garnered such a high levelof approval, formal declarations of war notwithstanding. The War of 1812 met withopposition in the Northeast; the Civil War provoked draft riots in the North; the wardeclaration against Spain in 1898 barely commanded a majority in the U.S. Senate;and World War I was recalled mostly with regret when polls started taking the pulse ofAmerican public opinion in the 1930s (Mueller 1973, 169). World War II may be uniqueas the American war that started with an outpouring of popular enthusiasm that neverabated throughout the years of fighting and never jeopardized the political survival ofeither the commander in chief or his party.

Conclusion

The proposition that voters are averse to changing leaders in the middle of a war hasreceived qualified support in this analysis. FDR got a special boost in electoral supportfrom the wartime condition in both the 1940 and 1944 election. It appears highlyunlikely that he would have been reelected in either one except for war, provided hewould have sought reelection in the absence of war. But it is also true that FDR earneda wartime premium each time through popular support for war-related issues, be it hispolicy of aiding Britain or his ability to lead the nation to victory in war. Barring theseadvantages, FDR’s reelection would have been imperiled.

The World War II elections merit close attention for a number of reasons. Theyare the first wartime contests held in the age of survey research. Even though the UnitedStates was not at war in 1940, war in Europe was the dominant issue in American politicsthen; FDR’s decision to seek an unprecedented third term was publicly justified withthe wartime rationale of not changing horses in midstream.15 What is more, the surveyscovering electoral choices in those elections have languished too long in undeservedobscurity. The 1944 NORC election survey, with its pre-post panel design and extensive

15. The 1940 and 1944 elections are unique in that a sitting president is seeking a third and fourthterm. But this feature, if anything, sets the bar for reelection higher rather than lower. It was not a popularoption. The 1944 NORC study found widespread support for a two-term limit, which was subsequentlyadopted as a constitutional amendment.


questionnaire, merits recognition as the first national election study. And finally, theWorld War II elections provide a rare test case in the age of survey research where apresident seeks reelection in wartime.

A major part of the evidence comes from a counterfactual question in the wartimeelection surveys. Respondents were asked how they would vote (have voted) if there wasno war. The results show that, taken at face value, enough voters changed their vote toalter the outcome of both the 1940 and 1944 presidential elections. Controls for parti-sanship and the most important motive cited for one’s vote leave the finding intactthat FDR would not have been reelected without war. A time-series test of presidentialelections throughout American history corroborates the counterfactual survey findings.With a cyclical model used as a baseline, the 1940 and 1944 elections register sizablevote gains, in the aggregate, for the presidential party. This is quite typical for wartimeelections in American history. Voters apparently heed the advice against changing horsesin the middle of a war. But the exceptions are revealing as well.

Although, strictly speaking, no wartime president has lost a bid for reelection,some have bowed out under pressure from dissatisfaction with an ongoing war. Theelections of 1952 and 1968 are widely remembered for wars (Korea and Vietnam) thatended the careers of two presidents (Truman and Johnson) while also ousting thepresident’s party from the White House. What spared FDR this fate in the world warelections, as shown by the election surveys in 1940 and 1944, was widespread publicsupport for his policy on war and peace or his performance as wartime commander inchief. Hence, the electoral premium in wartime is no guarantee. When the public has lostfaith in the president to get the country through the perils of war, a change of horses inthe next election is imminent.

There is no question that World War II is unique among the wars in Americanhistory. It threatened the United States in a way that was not the case in declared wars(e.g., with Mexico and Spain) or “undeclared” ones in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. Had theUnited States and its allies lost World War II or just failed to defeat Germany, theconsequences would be too frightening to contemplate. These factors, of course, do notguarantee popular support or adoption of policies that prove successful. What is perhapsmost unique about World War II is the success of a wartime president to stake out acourse of action that would deliver victory on the battlefield and in the arena of publicopinion.

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Documents

To Change or Not to Change Horses: The World War II Elections