Were they better off with the New Deal?

Via the NYT, a nice graph of presidential victory margins, with the electoral college going up the y axis and the popular vote going out the x axis. Note the circled data point.

The 1936 presidential election was cast by campaigners as a referendum on Roosevelt’s economic policies—particularly by the GOP and the Liberty League (created for the purpose), who urged Americans to vote Republican and stand with the Supreme Court against the New Deal. They lost, apparently because enough voters thought they were better off with the New Deal than without it. Larry Bartels notes that this was true in the crassest sense—states with “robust income growth” provided especially strong support, which may have meant the election was simply about improvements in economic performance.