Breaking with the two-term tradition set by George Washington, Roosevelt won reelection with 449 electoral votes to Wendell Willkie's 82. Campaigning on experience and steady leadership as fascism spread across Europe, Roosevelt argued the nation needed continuity in dangerous times. His victory set the stage for the Twenty-Second Amendment, ratified after his death, which formally limited presidents to two terms.
By 1940, Franklin Roosevelt had already served two terms and faced enormous pressure from both tradition and his own advisors to step aside. No president had ever sought a third term, and many feared the precedent of an entrenched executive. But with World War II raging and France having just fallen to Germany, Roosevelt argued that experienced leadership was essential, and he accepted the Democratic nomination.
His opponent, Republican businessman Wendell Willkie, was a political newcomer who actually supported much of the New Deal and aid to Britain, making the race less about policy than about the third-term question itself. Roosevelt campaigned relatively lightly at first, then delivered a series of sharp speeches in the campaign's final weeks after polls tightened, reassuring mothers and fathers that 'your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.'
Roosevelt won decisively, carrying 38 states. He would go on to win a fourth term in 1944 before dying in office in April 1945 — the only president to break the two-term norm, a precedent so unsettling to Congress that it enshrined the two-term limit into the Constitution via the Twenty-Second Amendment in 1951.
Key people: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie