The 1928 United States presidential election in Florida was held on November 6, 1928, as part of the 1928 United States presidential election held throughout all contemporary forty-eight states. Florida voters chose six electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. Background Ever since the disfranchisement of blacks at the beginning of the 1890s, Florida had been a one-party state ruled by the Democratic Party. The disfranchisement of blacks and poor whites by poll taxes in 1889 had left the Republican Party – between 1872 and 1888 dependent upon black votes – virtually extinct. With the single exception of William Howard Taft's win in Calhoun County in 1908 the Democratic Party won every county in Florida in every presidential election from 1892 until 1916. Only twice – and never for more than one term – did any Republican serve in either house of the state legislature between 1896 and 1928. Despite this Democratic dominance and the restrictions on the franchise of the poorer classes due to the poll tax, significant socialist movements were to develop and persist in Tampa and to a lesser extent over other parts of the state, especially against the powerful Ku Klux Klan. There was also a powerful Prohibitionist movement in older North Florida, which saw the Prohibition Party even win the governorship for one term under the notorious anti-Catholic minister Sidney J. Catts, who was later to be a major foe of Alfred Emmanuel Smith. The 1920 presidential election saw Warren Harding, aided substantially by isolationist sentiment in the region, gain more support in the former Confederacy than any Republican since black disfranchisement, in the process winning three Florida counties. Calvin Coolidge in 1924 was to do no more than maintain these gains, but did show that the presidential GOP vote from transplanted Northerners was equal to or greater than the traditional Unionist GOP vote (which Florida entirely lacked) of Texas, Arkansas, Alabama or Georgia. Anti-Catholic and Prohibitionist fear With all other prominent Democrats sitting the election out, the party nominated Alfred E. Smith, four-term Governor of New York as its nominee for 1928, with little opposition. There was nonetheless almost no pro-Smith sympathy in Florida, which as part of the "Solid South" had been a major force in his 1924 defeat. This defeat was related to four characteristics of Smith that made him anything but an ideal candidate