His first act as president was to deal with the country's banking crisis.
In 1932, America suffered greatly during the Great Depression. The President at the time, Herbert Hoover, promised many reforms and improvements that would help everyone get back onto their feet. Those promises were broken as Hoover did little to pull America out of the Depression. As a result, Hoover wasn't really well liked, during and after the depression. When the elections of 1932 came around, Hoover decided to run again, but Americans went and voted for Roosevelt, who actually did something to help during the depression.
The cause of the Great Depression is when the stock market crashed in 1929 which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors.
Democrats had been losing elections in what had long been considered solid Democratic territory in the South. Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat who took up the presidency after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, had become associated in the minds of voters with the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement aimed to give black Americans equality. This did not sit well with white voters in the South. In the 1964 presidential election, the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, won the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Nevertheless, Johnson prevailed and won the election. But it showed conservative Democrats were willing to shift to the Republican party if they felt it more closely aligned with their views.
