Elections in the United States: 1948

The Event Presidential and congressional elections

Date November 2, 1948

Following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt from a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945, Harry S. Truman became president of the United States. In 1948, he ran for a full term against Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey. Despite a divisive split within the Democratic Party and public opinion polls that predicted a landslide victory for Dewey, Truman persevered and won.

After the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, World War II came to a fairly abrupt end. The economy that had thrived during the war was thrust into a recession, and the popularity of President Truman plummeted. Wages did not keep up with rising costs of living, and many necessities remained in short supply even after the end of wartime rationing. Labor strikes added to the economic turmoil affecting the steel, coal mining, and railroad industries. Truman could not solve the economic problems and was frequently portrayed by the media as unable to meet the challenges presented to him, making him politically vulnerable. The Republican Party was excited at the chance to reclaim the White House, and the Democratic Party felt doomed with Truman.

The Campaign

The Republican Party selected New York governor Thomas E. Dewey as the party’s nominee for president, as he had been in 1944. Dewey was a better orator than Truman, and his campaign seemed better organized. Former vice president Henry Wallace’s decision to defect from the Democratic Party left the incumbent Truman hoping for the support of its splintered remains.

Truman began his campaign for reelection early. In his January, 1948, state of the union address, he promoted increases in the minimum wage, price supports for farmers, unemployment compensation, and an anti-inflation program designed to combat rising price levels. He also called for civil rights legislation. Both Truman and Dewey traveled extensively by railroad, crisscrossing the country, making speeches and appearances, and trying to gain support. Truman became quite adept at such whistle-stop campaigning and took an eighteen-state train tour under the guise of delivering a commencement address at the University of California. His campaign realized that he faced an uphill battle but hoped and believed that he still had a chance to win. Clark Clifford, a White House counsel, and James Rowe, an adviser to Roosevelt, forecast the defection of Wallace to a third party and predicted Truman’s eventual victory. They encouraged him to appeal to the Roosevelt coalition of labor, farmers, middle-class liberals, the South, and African Americans in the North. His campaign was long and tiresome, but effective. Dewey ran a more relaxed campaign, making fewer addresses than Truman and relying more on the radio time the Republican Party was able to purchase.

Also in the running were Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who ran for the States’ Rights Party, and Wallace, who upset the Democratic Party when he declared his candidacy for the newly formed Progressive Party. Thurmond appeared to have widespread support in the South and with the Democrats who were unwilling to take on civil rights issues. Wallace was likely to garner support from the Northeast and parts of the Midwest. The Progressive Party platform called for repaired diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, the destruction of all atomic bombs, an end to segregation, and an end to the Marshall Plan.

Throughout the campaign, numerous public opinion polls were taken to predict the presidential winner. In August of 1948, Gallup polls showed Dewey 11 points ahead of Truman (48 percent to 37 percent). As the two continued to campaign, more citizens came to see Truman, but Dewey found fewer people at his rallies. Journalists did not recognize the significance of the increasing crowds that turned out to see Truman speak, discounting this as mere curiosity and not support. The final polls for the election by both Gallup and Crossley showed Dewey in the lead with about 49 percent and Truman trailing at 44 percent. On the evening of election night, newspapers began to print their editions for the next day, declaring Dewey the winner. In perhaps the most famous picture of the election, Truman was photographed holding a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune with a banner headline declaring “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

The Election Day Upset

The election saw one of the biggest political upsets in American history. Truman received 49.5 percent of the popular vote, topping Dewey’s 45.1 percent. A major reason for the discrepancy between the predicted and the actual results was that many of the polls ended in mid-October and they did not account for the last-minute decisions of voters. The difference in the candidates’ popular votes was magnified in the electoral college, where Truman received 303 votes to Dewey’s 189, with 266 being enough for victory. Wallace and Thurmond each received about 2.4 percent of the national total. Thurmond won 39 electoral votes with the support he gained in his home state of South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana; he also earned one electoral vote from Tennessee. Wallace did not earn any electoral college votes. Socialist candidate Norman Thomas and Prohibition candidate Claude A. Watson each received less than 0.4 percent of the popular vote.

Congressional Results

The Eightieth Congress (1947-1949) had seen the loss of Democratic control in the Senate. In the 1946 elections for the House of Representatives, Republicans had picked up 55 seats and the majority. The Republican Party thus gained control of Congress for the first time since 1930. In the 1948 elections, the electorate turned its support back to the Democratic Party, which gained 9 seats in the Senate to recapture the majority. The Democrats’ gain of 75 seats in the House brought their total to 263, against the Republicans’ 171.

Impact

Truman pledged continued support for the United Nations, which was formed in 1945. He spoke adamantly against what many saw as communist aggression and vowed to continue the Marshall Plan in Europe. Furthermore, in his inaugural address, Truman proposed aid for underdeveloped countries, hoping to contain the spread of communism. He also sent troops into South Korea to help resist an invasion from North Korea. On April 11, 1951, Truman dismissed World War II hero General Douglas MacArthur from his role in the military oversight of Japan, largely as a result of MacArthur’s disagreements with Truman over handling of the Korean War. In April of 1952, he seized U.S. steel mills to prevent a labor strike, but that action was found unconstitutional in the case of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952). This decision, by a U.S. Supreme Court composed entirely of judges appointed by Truman and Roosevelt, was one of the major defeats of Truman’s presidency. Truman is also recognized for desegregating the military.

Bibliography

Israel, Fred L. Student’s Atlas of American Presidential Elections, 1789 to 1996. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1997. Offers a quick look at the candidates, issues, and results of each U.S. presidential election over the course of more than two centuries.

McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Traces Harry S. Truman’s life from his early years in Independence, Missouri, to his time in the White House and beyond. Offers a look at Truman’s personality and experiences that shaped his political decisions.

Mieczkowski, Yanek. The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections. New York: Routledge, 2001. Coverage of all presidential elections from 1789 to 2000. Includes more than 70 maps and illustrations to facilitate interpretations of the data and comparisons among elections and candidates.

Morris-Lipsman, Arlene. Presidential Races: The Battle for Power in the United States. Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, 2008. Filled with images from presidential campaigns, information about each race, and explanations of how presidential elections have changed since the first one in 1789.

Ross, Irwin. The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman Victory of 1948. New York: New American Library, 1968. Looks at the challenges facing the Truman team and the difficulties that they had to overcome to achieve Truman’s surprising victory in 1948.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., with Fred L. Israel and David J. Frent, eds. The Election of 1948 and the Administration of Harry S. Truman. Broomall, Pa.: Mason Crest, 2003. This short book (128 pages) for younger readers discusses the election and Truman’s second administration. Based on source documents.

Truman, Harry S. Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998. This collection of more than six hundred letters Truman wrote to his wife, Bess, offers a personal perspective on the events in their lives.