1944 United States presidential election in Minnesota 1944 United States presidential election in Minnesota The 1944 United States presidential election in Minnesota took place on November 7, 1944, in Minnesota as part of the 1944 United States presidential election. The Democratic candidate, incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt won the state over New York governor Thomas E. Dewey by a margin of 62,448 votes, or 5.55%. Nationally, Roosevelt was re-elected to an unprecedented fourth term as president, with 432 electoral votes and a comfortable 7.5% lead over Dewey in the popular vote. However, Roosevelt would not serve the entirety of his fourth term, as he died within a
Franklin D. Roosevelt transformed American politics and started what political scientists call the "New Deal Party System" or the Fifth Party System. Between the Civil War and 1929, Democrats had rarely controlled both houses of Congress and had won just four of seventeen presidential elections; from 1932 to 1979, Democrats won eight of twelve presidential elections and generally controlled both houses of Congress. Roosevelt was elected in November 1932 but, like his predecessors, would not take office until the following March. After the election, Hoover sought to convince Roosevelt to renounce much of his campaign platform and to endorse the Hoover administration's policies.