FDR and Unemployment Above 8%

Franklin Roosevelt won re-election with unemployment at Depression Era levels of around 20 percent!
When FDR won the presidency in 1932, the unemployment rate was a staggering 23.5 percent.  A year later in 1933 it was 24.7 percent.  In 1934 it was just under 22 percent.  In 1935, for the first time in his presidency, unemployment dipped below 20 percent, but only to 19.97 percent.  And by 1936, when he ran for re-election, 16.8 percent of Americans still couldn’t find jobs.
So during FDR’s first term the unemployment rate ranged from a high of nearly 25 percent to a low of about 17 percent – and he still won re-election.
Then in 1937, 14 percent of Americans were still out of work.  In 1938, unemployment went back up to about 19 percent.  In 1939 it was 17 percent, and in 1940, it was down to 14.45 percent.
So at no point during his first two terms had unemployment gone below that 14.45 percent, yet Roosevelt not only won re-election, he was re-elected to a third term – the first time that had ever happened in the entire history of the United States.