When the 1932 election came around, many had lost hope that President Hoover could bring the country out of the Depression.
Hoover ran for reelection against Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who campaigned on the promise of a “new deal for the American people.” Roosevelt won by a landslide.
By the time he took office in 1933, one-quarter of the U.S. workforce—15 million people—was unemployed. Hourly wages were 60 percent lower than they had been in 1929. Roosevelt immediately swung into action with a program of relief, recovery, and reform called the New Deal. His philosophy was that it was better to try something and fail than not to try at all.
