The Waterbury Democrat., 1936-06-24

politicians to ask one another whett hard.
 The Union Party" holds q posl Now imminent or how remote that of argument until the campaign e6ts under way and one can begin to estimate the extent to which LeInlEe, with the support of Father Coughlin and his appeal to follow eFs Of pr. Townsend and the late Huey Long, ts going places and in which direction,
 It G too early for anyone either A0 anticipate the worst or tO tOss 0fe the Lennke complication a unS important It is to be remembered that the third party can't get on the ballot in some states end that it won't be entered i1l others.
 But realistic democrats admit that LeEnge seems likely to draw many more votes away from , Roosevelt than from LandOn. The dent will be made In Che Fadl- cal fringe 0e what reasonably might now be considered ROose- velvs November vote.
 Some politicians ct the convers ton think many TnWnsendltes who had planned to vote against the president in imagined retalia- ton for the House investigation of thDir movement will now be lost to Landon, but the majority pin no great faith to such an off- set.
 How It Worked in '16
 The question here, where 1t is commonly believed Roosevelt has definite edge on Landon, D whether Lemke could draw off Uufficient votes in enough states to give Landon the election.
 That brings up the all.import- { ant questions How close is the contest between Roosevelt and LandOn, other things being equal, gGlng to be? The answer to that one 10 that nobody knows.
 Anyone will c0imprehend the situation who looks ct the election results ia two previous years, 1918 and 102f. In the first instance it Will be seen how . few thousand Lemke votes in . single state might decide whether Roosevelt OR Random was to be the next president if the race were close.
 The second instance demonstrates how Lemke might poll Q much big ger vote than anyone supposes he will and still have no effect on the result if there were Q strong nation- al trend toward, let's say, Roose- velk
 Few Votes Decided Issue
 !. Frank Hanly of Indiana, and Ira Landrlth of Massachusetts, ran on the Prohibition party ticket in 1916 and polled 220,0OO votes,
 You may remember that Che issue hung In the balance for three days because of b close contest In California, which finally by 315S votes gave her 13 electoral votes tN Woodrow Wilson and elected him over Charles Evans Hughes, now chief justice, by an electoral total of 257 to 2D4.
 The Prohibition party in Califor- mia polled nearly 28,000 popular votes. If there had been no Pro- hibition ticket and Hughes could have won four out of every seven of those dry voters, Wilson would not have been president. There was good reason for believing that the drys would have gone for Hughes.
 The contest was close in all rec spects. Wilson's popular vote was only 0,120,000 as compared with B. 63e,O0D for Hughes. The moral is that if there's any neck and neck finish aspect to io30, Lemke is likely to elect Landon over Roosevelt. No Effect in 1924
 Tn 1924 the late Senator "old Bob" LaFollette rolled up nearly 100000 third party votes and John w. Davis polled 8,386,000 against 1B,726, ,0OO for Coolidge, who carried tho electoral college 383 to i36--- with only Wisconsin's l3 for LaFol- iette.
 That was 6 year of Republican landslide and if the voters are any where near as fond of Roosevelt this year ae they were of Coolidge then, the Lemke vote becomes unim2or' lant.
 Lemke's friends in Washington guess that he may poll between one and two million votes, but no more.
 Certain intanglbles may be de- Olsiye and your guess on those is just as good as Jlin FaFiey's or John Hamllton's. VIII the LeIike candidacy tend to build up ROose- welt as . snlddle-pf -the-T0ad cau- didate and rally voters who might otherwise veer toward LandOn, but who would feel more comfortable jumping in somewhere between .ahe tradltlonally conservative Republicans and the radical infia- tIonista2
 Some Democrats think 50. Some also believe that h0dgepodge third party movement featuring infiation, CoughlInism, "share the wealth" end old age revolving pensions will not be as appealing to voters as would one with . strong central