United States presidential election, 1948

< 1944  1952 >
United States presidential election, 1948
2 November 1948
	Winner	Runner up	Third
Nominee	Harry S. Truman	Thomas E. Dewey	Strom Thurmond
Party	Democratic	Republican	Dixiecrat
Home State	Missouri	New York	South Carolina
Running mate	Alben W. Barkley	Earl Warren	Fielding L. Wright
Electoral Vote	303	189	39
States Carried	28	16	4
Popular Vote	24,179,347	21,991,292	1,175,930
Percentage	49.6%	45.1%	2.4%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Truman/Barkley, Blue denotes those won by Dewey/Warren, Orange denotes those won by Thurmond/Wright. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
Before Election Harry S. Truman Democratic			After Election Harry S. Truman Democratic

The United States presidential election of 1948 is considered by most historians as the greatest election upset in American history. Virtually every prediction (with or without public opinion polls) indicated that incumbent President Harry S. Truman would be defeated by Republican Thomas Dewey. Truman won, overcoming a three-way split in his own party. Truman's surprise victory was the fifth consecutive win for the Democratic Party in a presidential election. Truman's election confirmed the Democratic Party's status as the nation's majority party, a status they would retain until the 1980s.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

Republican Candidates

• Riley A. Bender, businessman from Illinois
• Thomas E. Dewey, Governor of New York and 1944 presidential nominee
• Joseph W. Martin, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts
• Douglas MacArthur, 5-star General and Commander of U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific in World War II from Wisconsin
• Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota and candidate for the 1944 nomination
• Robert A. Taft, U.S. senator and candidate for the 1940 and 1944 nominations from Ohio
• Arthur H. Vandenberg, U.S. senator and candidate for the 1940 nomination from Michigan
• Earl Warren, Governor of California

Both major parties courted general Dwight Eisenhower, the most popular general of World War II. Eisenhower's political views were unknown in 1948. He was, later events would prove, a moderate Republican, but in 1948 he flatly refused the nomination of any political party.

With Eisenhower refusing to run, the contest for the Republican nomination was between New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, General Douglas MacArthur, Ohio Senator Robert Taft and California Governor Earl Warren. Governor Dewey, who had been the Republican nominee in 1944, was regarded as the frontrunner when the primaries began. Dewey was the acknowledged leader of the GOP's powerful eastern establishment; in 1946 he had been re-elected Governor of New York by the largest margin in state history. Dewey's handicap was that many Republicans disliked him; he often struck observers as cold, stiff and condescending. Senator Taft was the leader of the GOP's conservative wing. He opened his campaign in 1947 by attacking the Democratic Party's domestic policy and foreign policy. On foreign policy, Taft was an isolationist who blamed Truman for implementing the Morgenthau Plan in occupied Germany, thereby wrecking the European economy which (in his view) thus required rescue from U.S. taxpayers in the form of the Marshall Plan. [1] In domestic issues, Taft and his fellow conservatives wanted to abolish many of the New Deal social welfare programs that had been created in the 1930's; they regarded these programs as too expensive and harmful to business interests. Taft had two major weaknesses: he was seen as a plodding, dull campaigner, and he was viewed by most party leaders as being too conservative and controversial to win a presidential election. Taft's support was limited to his native Midwest and parts of the South.

The "surprise" candidate of 1948 was Stassen, the former "boy wonder" of Minnesota politics. Stassen had been elected governor of Minnesota at the age of 31; he resigned as governor in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army in World War II. In 1945 he had served on the committee which created the United Nations. Stassen was widely regarded as the most "liberal" of the Republican candidates, yet as the primaries continued he was criticized for being vague on many issues. Stassen stunned Dewey in the Wisconsin and Nebraska primaries, thus making him the frontrunner. He then made the mistake of trying to defeat Senator Taft in Taft's home state of Ohio; Taft defeated Stassen in Ohio and Stassen earned the animosity of the party's conservatives. Even so, Stassen was still leading Dewey in the polls for the upcoming Oregon primary. However, Dewey, who realized that a defeat in Oregon would end his chances at the nomination, sent his powerful political organization into the state. Stassen also agreed to debate Dewey in Oregon on national radio - it was the first-ever radio debate between presidential candidates. The sole issue of the debate concerned whether to outlaw the Communist Party in the United States. Stassen, despite his liberal reputation, argued in favor of outlawing the party, while Dewey forcefully argued against it; at one point he famously stated that "you can't shoot an idea with a gun". Most observers rated Dewey as the winner of the debate, and a few days later Dewey defeated Stassen in Oregon. From this point forward, the New York governor had the momentum he needed to win his party's second nomination.

Republican Convention

Businessman Riley A. Bender of Illinois	Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York	General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of Arkansas	Speaker of the House Joseph William Martin, Jr. of Massachusetts
Former Governor Harold E. Stassen of Minnesota	President pro tempore of the Senate Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan	Governor Earl Warren of California	Senator Robert Taft of Ohio

The 1948 Republican National Convention was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the first presidential convention to be shown on television. As the convention opened Dewey was seen as having a large lead in the delegate count. His major opponents - Taft, Stassen, and Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan - met in Taft's hotel suite to plan a "stop-Dewey" movement. However, a key obstacle soon developed when the three men refused to unite behind a single candidate to oppose Dewey. Instead, all three men simply agreed to try and hold their own delegates in the hopes of preventing Dewey from obtaining a majority. This proved to be futile, as Dewey's efficient campaign team gathered up the delegates they needed to win the nomination. After the second round of balloting, Dewey was only 33 votes short of victory. Taft then called Stassen and urged him to withdraw from the race and endorse him as Dewey's main opponent. When Stassen refused, Taft wrote a concession speech and had it read at the start of the third ballot; Dewey was then nominated by acclamation. Dewey then chose popular Governor Earl Warren of California as his running mate. Following the convention, most political experts in the news media rated the GOP ticket as an almost-certain winner over the Democrats.

Progressive Party nomination

Meanwhile, the Democratic party had fragmented. A new Progressive Party — the name had been used earlier by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and Robert M. La Follette, Sr. in 1924 — was created afresh in 1948 with the nomination of Henry Wallace, who had served as Secretary of Agriculture and Vice-President under Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1946 President Truman had fired Wallace as Secretary of Commerce when Wallace publicly opposed Truman's firm stand against the Soviet Union. Wallace's 1948 platform opposed the Cold War, the Marshall Plan and Big Business. He also campaigned to end discrimination against blacks and women, backed a minimum wage and called for the elimination of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was investigating the issue of communist spies within the U.S. government and labor unions. Wallace and his supporters believed that the committee was violating the civil liberties of government workers and labor unions. The Progressive Party Convention, which was held in Philadelphia, was a highly contentious affair; several famous newspaper journalists, such as H.L. Mencken and Dorothy Thompson, accused the Progressives of being covertly controlled by Communists. Some leading figures of the Progressive Party (such as socialist leader Norman Thomas) quit the party in protest over what they perceived as the undue influence Communists exerted over Wallace. Thomas ran as the Socialist Party presidential candidate to offer non-Communist liberals an alternative to Wallace.

Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho, an eccentric figure who was known as a "singing cowboy" and who had ridden his horse "Nugget" up the steps of the United States Capitol after winning election to the Senate in 1944, was named as Wallace's running mate.

Democratic Party nomination

Senator Richard Russell, Jr. of Georgia

President Harry S. Truman of Missouri

On July 12, the Democratic National Convention convened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the same arena where the Republicans had met a few weeks earlier. Spirits were low: the Republicans had taken control of both houses of the United States Congress and a majority of state governorships during the 1946 midterm elections by running against Truman, and the public-opinion polls showed Truman trailing Republican nominee Dewey, sometimes by double-digits. Furthermore, some liberal Democrats had joined Henry Wallace's new Progressive Party, and party leaders feared that Wallace would take enough votes from Truman to give the large Northern and Midwestern states to the Republicans.

As a result of Truman's low standing in the polls, several Democratic party bosses began working to "dump" Truman and nominate a more popular candidate. Among the leaders of this movement were Jack Arvey, the "boss" of the Chicago Democratic organization, Frank Hague, the "boss" of New Jersey, James Roosevelt, the eldest son of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Senator Claude Pepper of Florida. The primary target of the rebels was General Dwight Eisenhower. Despite their efforts, however, Eisenhower refused to become a candidate (in 1952 he revealed that he was a Republican). Dispirited, the leaders of the "dump" Truman movement then reluctantly agreed to support Truman for the nomination. At the Democratic Convention, a group of Northern liberals, led by Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey, successfully pushed through a platform (over vigorous Southern opposition) that promoted civil rights for blacks. This caused some three dozen Southern delegates, led by South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, to walk out of the convention. Nonetheless, 947 Democrats voted to nominate the incumbent President as their candidate (against 263 for Senator Richard Russell, Jr. of Georgia). Truman then selected Kentucky Senator Alben W. Barkley as his running mate, who was nominated by acclamation.

Dixiecrat Party nomination

The Democratic delegates who had bolted the Democratic Convention over Truman's civil rights platform promptly met in Birmingham, Alabama and formed yet another political party, which they named the "States Rights" Democratic Party. More commonly known as the “Dixiecrats”, the party's main goal was continuing the policy of racial segregation in the South and the Jim Crow laws that sustained it. South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, who had led the walkout, became the party's presidential nominee. Mississippi Governor Fielding L. Wright received the vice presidential nomination. Although the Dixiecrats did not expect to win the election, they did hope to take enough Southern states from Truman to force the election into the United States House of Representatives, where they could then extract concessions from either Truman or Dewey on racial issues in exchange for their support. Despite being an incumbent President, Truman was not placed on the ballot in Alabama. ^[1]

General election

The fall campaign

Dewey during a campaign tour in New York

Given Truman's sinking popularity and the seemingly fatal three-way split in the Democratic Party, Dewey appeared unbeatable. Top Republicans believed that all their candidate had to do to win was to avoid major missteps; in keeping with this advice, Dewey carefully avoided risks. He spoke in platitudes, avoided controversial issues, and was vague on what he planned to do as President. Speech after speech was filled with non-political, optimistic assertions of the obvious, including the now-infamous quote “You know that your future is still ahead of you.” An editorial in The (Louisville) Courier-Journal summed it up best: “No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead.”^[2] Truman, trailing in the polls, decided to adopt a slashing, no-holds-barred campaign. He ridiculed Dewey by name, criticized Dewey's refusal to address specific issues, and scornfully targeted the Republican-controlled 80th Congress with a wave of relentless, and blistering, partisan assaults. He nicknamed the Republican-controlled Congress as the "do-nothing" Congress, a remark which brought strong criticism from GOP Congressional leaders (such as Senator Taft), but no comment from Dewey. In fact, Dewey rarely mentioned Truman's name during the campaign, which fit into his strategy of appearing to be "above" petty partisan politics.

President Harry S. Truman at the mic, left Harley O. Staggers & Alben W. Barkley. 1948 in Keyser, West Virginia on Whistle Stop Train

Under Dewey's leadership, the Republicans had enacted a platform at the 1948 convention that called for expanding social security, more funding for public housing, civil rights legislation, and promotion of health and education by the federal government. These positions were, however, unacceptable to the conservative Congressional Republican leadership. Truman exploited this rift in the opposing party by calling a special session of Congress on “Turnip Day” (referring to an old piece of Missouri folklore about planting turnips in late July) and daring the Republican Congressional leadership to pass its own platform. The 80th Congress played into Truman's hands, delivering very little in the way of substantive legislation during this time. The GOP's lack of action in the "turnip" session of Congress allowed Truman to continue his attacks on the "do-nothing" Republican-controlled Congress. Truman simply ignored the fact that Dewey's policies were considerably more liberal than most of his fellow Republicans, and instead he concentrated his fire against the conservative, obstructionist tendencies of the unpopular 80th Congress. For his part, Dewey remained aloof. Following the advice of his campaign staff, he did not respond directly to Truman's attacks. This would prove to be a major mistake.

Truman toured -- and transfixed -- much of the nation with his fiery rhetoric, playing to large, enthusiastic crowds. “Give 'em hell, Harry,” was a popular slogan shouted out at stop after stop along the tour. However, the polls and the pundits all held that Dewey's lead was insurmountable, and that Truman's efforts were for naught. Indeed, Truman's own staff considered the campaign a last hurrah. The only person who appears to have considered Truman's campaign to be winnable was the President himself, who confidently predicted victory to anyone and everyone who would listen to him. However, even Truman's own wife had private doubts that her husband could win.

In the final weeks of the campaign, American movie theatres agreed to play two short newsreel-like campaign films in support of the two major-party candidates; each film had been created by its respective campaign organization. The Dewey film, shot professionally on an impressive budget, featured very high production values, but somehow reinforced an image of the New York governor as cautious and distant. The Truman film, hastily assembled on virtually no budget by the perpetually cash-short Truman campaign, relied heavily on public-domain and newsreel footage of the President taking part in major world events and signing important legislation. Perhaps unintentionally, the Truman film visually reinforced an image of the President as engaged and decisive. Years later, historian David McCullough cited the expensive, but lackluster, Dewey film, and the far cheaper, but more effective, Truman film, as important factors in determining the preferences of undecided voters.

Results

Famous photograph of Truman grinning and holding up a copy of the newspaper that (falsely) announced his defeat.

On election night - November 2 - Dewey, his family, and campaign staff confidently gathered in the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City to await the returns. Truman, aided by the Secret Service, sneaked away from reporters covering him in Kansas City and made his way to nearby Excelsior Springs, Missouri, a small resort town. There he took a room in the local hotel, had a Turkish bath, and went to sleep. As the returns came in Truman took an early lead which he never lost. However, the leading radio commentators, such as H. V. Kaltenborn of CBS, confidently predicted that once the "late returns" came in Dewey would overcome Truman's lead and win. At midnight, Truman awoke and turned on the radio in his room; he heard Kaltenborn announce that, while Truman was still ahead in the popular vote, he couldn't possibly win. Around 4 a.m. Truman awoke again, heard on the radio that his lead was nearly two million votes, and decided to ride back to Kansas City. For the rest of his life Truman would gleefully mimic Kaltenborn's voice predicting his defeat throughout that election night. Dewey, meanwhile, realized that he was in trouble when early returns from New York and New England showed him running well behind his expected vote total. He stayed up throughout the night examining the votes as they came in. By 10:30 the next morning he was convinced that he had lost; he then sent a gracious telegram of concession to Truman.

When the returns were analyzed, it became obvious that while Thurmond's Dixiecrat party took away some of the Democratic Party's traditional base in the “Solid South”, it had not sparked the wholesale revolt in the South that had been predicted. (Thurmond carried only four states.) Wallace took some voters from the left wing of the Democratic Party, but far fewer of them than pundits had predicted. In part, this was because of Wallace's failure to repudiate the endorsement of the Communist Party, a blunder that severely undermined his popularity. Although he received over a million votes (the only fourth place candidate ever to do so) it was only 2.5 percent of the popular vote. Nearly half of his national vote (44%) was cast for him in New York State, where he appeared on the American Labor Party line. The Dixiecrats, for their part, held no attraction whatsoever for voters outside the South, with Thurmond receiving a slightly larger percentage of the popular vote than Wallace.

The Chicago Tribune, then a pro-Republican newspaper, had been so confident of victory as to print “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN” on election night as its headline for the following day. A famous photograph taken the next morning showed Truman grinning and holding up a copy of that newspaper. Part of the reason Truman's victory came as such a shock was because of as-yet uncorrected flaws in the (emerging) craft of public opinion polling. Many of the supposedly reliable polls of voter's preferences in the race had been based on phone surveys—which, in 1948, produced a biased sample of affluent voters (who could afford telephones and also maintain a stable address), and who were thus more likely to support Dewey. Much of Truman's support came from the lower- and middle-class voting blocs, who were less able to afford telephones and thus missed being surveyed by the pollsters. Also, some pollsters had been so confident of Dewey's victory that they simply stopped polling voters weeks before the election, and thus missed a last-minute surge of support for the Democrats. After 1948, pollsters would survey voters until the day before the election: they would also announce their results on television, in real time, more or less.

Truman narrowly carried the large swing states of Ohio, California, and Illinois, all three of which he won by less than 1%. These three states had a combined total of 78 electoral votes. Had Dewey carried all three states, he would have won the election in the electoral college while still losing the popular vote. The extreme closeness of the vote in these three states was the major reason why Dewey waited until late on the morning of November 3 to concede. A similarly narrow margin garnered Idaho's electoral votes for Truman. Dewey countered by narrowly carrying New York and Pennsylvania, the states with the most electoral votes at the time, as well as Michigan, but it wasn't enough to give him the election. Thurmond's handful of electoral votes was not enough to deny Truman the electoral-vote majority.

Truman's victory can be attributed to many factors: his aggressive, populist campaign style; Dewey's complacent, distant approach to the campaign, and his failure to revisit basic assumptions about it; a major shift in public opinion during the late stages of a general election (a rarity in American politics); broad public approval of Truman's foreign policy, notably the Berlin Airlift of that year; and widespread dissatisfaction with the institution Truman labeled as the "do-nothing, good-for-nothing 80th Congress." In fact, it was essentially a Democratic year, as the Democrats not only retained the presidency but recaptured both houses of Congress, as well.

The 1948 election marked only the second time in American presidential election history that the winning candidate won despite losing Pennsylvania and New York (the first time being the 1916 election - later such elections included 1968, 2000, and 2004). It also refuted elections from across the world, as Truman was the war leader who managed to win re-election. As of 2007, Truman is the most unpopular leader to win re-election, though his standing with all Americans increased so much in the ensuing decades that he is remembered as one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century.

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1948 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (August 1, 2005).

Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (August 1, 2005).

Results by state

^(a) In New York, the Truman vote was a fusion of the Democratic and Liberal slates. There, Truman obtained 2,557,642 votes on the Democratic ticket and 222,562 votes on the Liberal ticket.^[3]
(b) In Mississippi, the Dewey vote was a fusion of the Republican and Independent Republican slates. There, Dewey obtained 2595 votes on the Republican ticket and 2448 votes on the Independent Republican ticket.^[3]

Bibliography

• Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson. Strom: The Complicated Personal and Political Life of Strom Thurmond (2005)
• Divine, Robert A. "The Cold War and the Election of 1948,"

The Journal of American History. Vol. 59, No. 1 (Jun., 1972), pp. 90-110 in JSTOR

• Donaldson, Gary A. (1999). Truman Defeats Dewey. University Press of Kentucky. 
• Gullan, Harold I. (1998). The Upset That Wasn't: Harry S. Truman and the Crucial Election of 1948. 
• Karabell, Zachary (2001). The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election. 
• Mosteller, Frederick (1949). The Pre-Election Polls of 1948: Report to the Committee on Analysis of Pre-Election Polls and Forecasts. Social Science Research Council. 
• Reinhard, David W. (1983). the Republican Right since 1945. University Press of Kentucky. 
• Richard Norton Smith. Thomas E. Dewey and His Times (1984)
• Schmidt, Karl M. (1960). Henry A. Wallace, Quixotic Crusade 1948. Syracuse University Press. 

Primary sources

• Neal, Steve (2003). Miracle of '48: Harry Truman's Major Campaign Speeches & Selected Whistle-Stops. Southern Illinois University Press. 

External links

• 1948 popular vote by counties
• 1948 State-by-state Popular vote

See also

• History of the United States (1945–1964)
• United States Senate elections, 1948

Notes

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