1952 Elections in the United States

The Event Elections for the presidency and other federal offices

Date November 4, 1952

Voters elected Dwight D. Eisenhower to the first of two terms as president, ending twenty years of Democratic control of the White House, and gave the Republican Party temporary control of Congress.

The Twenty-second Amendment, ratified February 26, 1951, limited presidents to two terms. Because it did not apply to Democratic President Harry S. Truman , many Americans assumed that Truman would run for reelection in 1952. Truman announced his decision not to seek reelection in the spring of 1952. Skeptics and critics of Truman suspected that his decision was prompted by his defeat in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary in March, 1952. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, a prominent critic and investigator of organized crime and corruption in the Truman administration, defeated Truman 19,800 to 15,927 votes.

The Democratic Party

Before the Democratic national convention opened in Chicago in July, the Democrats experienced a brief yet spirited contest for the presidential nomination. Although Kefauver won most Democratic presidential primaries, he competed against Alben William Barkley and Senators Richard Russell of Georgia and Robert Kerr of Oklahoma. Russell, an anti-civil rights conservative, decisively defeated Kefauver in the Florida presidential primary.

Since most delegates to the Democratic national convention were not chosen through binding primaries, it was unlikely that Estes Kefauver would be nominated for president. Southern conservative Democrats disliked Kefauver’s moderate position on civil rights, and northern Democrats resented his widely publicized Senate investigation of corruption, organized crime, and apparent collusion between gangsters and Democratic machine politicians. Although Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson repeatedly stated that he would not run for president, a draft-Stevenson movement gathered momentum and attracted delegate support before the convention. After Stevenson’s inspiring welcoming address stimulated a rousing response at the convention, the Illinois governor accepted the Democratic presidential nomination. In an effort to unite the Democratic Party for the election, Stevenson chose Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, an anti-civil rights economic liberal, as his running mate.

The Republican Party

While the Democrats were plagued by Truman’s low public approval ratings, inflation, a frustrating stalemate in the Korean War, and Republican charges of corruption and softness toward domestic and international communism, they at least retained their status as the majority party in voter identification. In preparing Stevenson’s campaign, Democratic strategists emphasized twenty years of progress in economic reforms, domestic policy, and foreign policy during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and portrayed a Republican victory in the elections of 1952 as a threat to popular Democratic-created policies that benefited farmers, union members, consumers, and the elderly. The Democrats hoped that the Republicans would nominate Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio for president. Nicknamed “Mr. Republican,” Taft was a conservative known for his controversial, acerbic criticism of New Deal programs.

Many leading Republicans, however, realized that in order to win control of the presidency and Congress, they needed to nominate a presidential candidate who could unite the Republican Party and attract the votes of most independents and a substantial minority of Democrats. Taft was too conservative, partisan, and divisive for this purpose. Although some Republicans persisted in promoting Taft’s presidential candidacy at the Republican national convention in Chicago, former general Dwight D. Eisenhower won the Republican presidential nomination on the second ballot. From the perspective of moderate and liberal Republicans who led the draft-Eisenhower movement long before the convention began, Eisenhower was the ideal candidate. Eisenhower was an immensely popular hero of World War II who accepted major New Deal policies and an internationalist, bipartisan foreign policy.

The General Election Campaign

In addition to choosing Senator Richard M. Nixon of California as his running mate, Eisenhower asserted that the three major issues of his presidential campaign were Korea, communism, and corruption. Regardless of their partisan and policy differences, many Americans were frustrated by Truman’s failure to end the Korean War victoriously and perceived Eisenhower as better able to successfully end it than Truman or Stevenson. Eisenhower’s charges of Democratic failure to combat domestic and international communism seemed to be substantiated by the popular appeal of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s dramatic accusations of communist influence in American foreign policy, Truman’s limited war strategy in Korea and his unpopular removal of General Douglas MacArthur from command there, the fall of China to communism in 1949, and the Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb linked to earlier communist infiltration of American atomic bomb research.

The credibility of Eisenhower’s third campaign theme, corruption, was undermined by news that Richard M. Nixon, his running mate, had received an ethically questionable slush fund from California businessmen. After Nixon’s televised “Checkers” speech, in which he explained the gifts, proved to be popular, Eisenhower retained him as his running mate. Although Stevenson had a reputation as a cerebral, articulate, “good government” reformer, he was often forced to defend the most unpopular, controversial aspects of Truman’s presidency and the Democratic Party. Stevenson’s campaign was also burdened by inadequate funds, disorganization, and Truman’s harsh criticism of the Republicans.

Election Results

Benefiting from a high voter turnout, the Republicans easily won the 1952 presidential election and narrowly gained control of Congress. This was the first time since 1928 that the Republicans won control of the presidency and Congress. Eisenhower carried thirty-nine of the forty-eight states in the electoral college and 55 percent of the popular votes. Stevenson carried a few border and southern states and lost his home state of Illinois. The Republicans achieved a five-seat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and a one-seat majority in the Senate.

Impact

The results of the 1952 federal elections influenced American politics and public policy for the remainder of the 1950’s. However, despite Eisenhower’s popularity and his subsequent landslide reelection against Stevenson in 1956, the Republican Party failed to become the new majority party among voters. The Democrats regained control of Congress in 1954, and Eisenhower was faced with a Democratic Congress during most of his presidency. Eisenhower emphasized bipartisan moderation in developing most of his major foreign and domestic policies, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the National Defense Education Act of 1958. The most conservative Republicans and the most liberal Democrats in Congress were often dissatisfied with the moderate, bipartisan tone and content of the politics and policies of the 1950’s.

Bibliography

Ambrose, Stephen E. Eisenhower: Soldier and President. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. A comprehensive biography of Eisenhower.

Pickett, William B. Eisenhower Decides to Run: Presidential Politics and Cold War Strategy. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. Focuses primarily on the 1952 election year, detailing Eisenhower’s strategy in his political win.

Savage, Sean J. Truman and the Democratic Party. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997. A study of Truman’s party leadership with details on the 1952 elections.