# 1940 Presidential Election [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]'s third-term run — the first violation of the two-term tradition established by [[George Washington]] in 1796. FDR defeated Republican [[Wendell Willkie]], a former Democrat and corporate utility executive who had won the GOP nomination at the Philadelphia convention against the field of more conservative candidates ([[Robert Taft]], [[Thomas Dewey]], Arthur Vandenberg). Willkie ran on an explicitly internationalist platform that broke with the isolationist wing of his own party — agreeing with FDR on Lend-Lease aid to Britain while attacking the [[New Deal]]'s domestic record. FDR won 449 to 82 electoral votes, 54.7% to 44.8% in the popular vote. ## Result - **[[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]** (Democrat) — 449 electoral votes, 54.7% popular (27,313,945 votes) - **Wendell Willkie** (Republican) — 82 electoral votes, 44.8% popular (22,347,744 votes) - Total: 531 electoral votes - Turnout: 62.5% ## Right-wing relevance The 1940 election's right-wing relevance is principally as the precedent that produced the **[[22nd Amendment]]** (proposed 1947, ratified 1951) limiting presidents to two terms. The two-term-limit was a direct Republican response to FDR's four-term run; contemporary right-wing commentary occasionally invokes the 1940 precedent in the context of: (a) the Trump-era musings about a possible third term, (b) the broader question of whether the 22nd Amendment is itself an anti-democratic constraint or a salutary structural protection. The 1940 election also marks the beginning of the **internationalist Republican** tradition (Willkie, Dewey, Eisenhower, Rockefeller, Bush 41) — a wing of the Republican Party that the post-2016 Trump-MAGA realignment has now substantially displaced. ## Connections - [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] — Elected to third term; first violation of two-term tradition. - [[William Rhodes Davis]] — Nazi-backed oilman who ran German money into this cycle: funding an anti-Roosevelt effort and financing [[John L. Lewis]]'s October 1940 radio address endorsing [[Wendell Willkie]]. The plan failed when Willkie proved an interventionist. The earliest documented case of [[Foreign Election Interference]] in a U.S. presidential race. ---