1924. Historian Allan Lichtman notes that since the sole defining issue of the election was anti-Catholicism, it radically realigned states' voting patterns. States that have never voted Republican after Reconstruction such as Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia voted for Hoover, while Smith carried Massachusetts and Rhode Island - states that have never voted Democrat before save for 1912. Lichtman further proves this by pointing out that Smith and Hoover had very similar political views save for religion and Prohibition, and yet the 1928 election had a turnout of 57%, despite previous 1920s American elections having their turnouts below 50%. Smith received nearly as many votes as Coolidge had in 1924, and his vote exceeded Davis's by more than 6,500,000. The Democratic vote was greater than in 1924 in 2080 counties and fell in 997 counties. In only one section did the Democratic vote drop below 38%, the Pacific, which was the only one in which the Republican vote exceeded 60%. However, the Democrats made gains in five sections; of those counties, fourteen had never been Democratic and seven had been Democratic only once. The size and the nature of the distribution of the Democratic vote illustrated Smith's strengths and weaknesses as a candidate. Despite evidence of an increased Democratic vote, Smith's overwhelming defeat in the electoral college and the retention of so few Democratic counties reflected Hoover's greater appeal. Smith won the electoral votes of only the Deep South of the Democratic Solid South, Robinson's home state of Arkansas, and the New England states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, both of which had a large proportion of Catholic voters. His 87 electoral votes were the fewest that a Democratic candidate had won since the 80 votes earned by Horatio Seymour in 1868. Hoover even carried Smith's home state of New York by a narrow margin. Smith carried 914 counties, the fewest in the Fourth Party System. The Republican total leaped to 2,174 counties, a larger number than even the 1920 landslide. Third-party support sank almost to the vanishing point, as the election of 1928 proved to be a two-party contest to a greater extent than any other in the Fourth Party System. Until the major split before the 1948 election in the Democratic Party between Southern Democrats and the more liberal Northern faction, no further significant third-party candidacies as seen in 1912 and 1924 were to occur. All "other"