1948 United States presidential election

1948 United States presidential election

← 1944 November 2, 1948 1952 →

531 members of the Electoral College
266 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout52.2%[1] Decrease 3.7 pp
 
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 24,178,347 21,991,292 1,176,023
Percentage 49.6% 45.1% 2.4%

1948 United States presidential election in California1948 United States presidential election in Oregon1948 United States presidential election in Washington (state)1948 United States presidential election in Idaho1948 United States presidential election in Nevada1948 United States presidential election in Utah1948 United States presidential election in Arizona1948 United States presidential election in Montana1948 United States presidential election in Wyoming1948 United States presidential election in Colorado1948 United States presidential election in New Mexico1948 United States presidential election in North Dakota1948 United States presidential election in South Dakota1948 United States presidential election in Nebraska1948 United States presidential election in Kansas1948 United States presidential election in Oklahoma1948 United States presidential election in Texas1948 United States presidential election in Minnesota1948 United States presidential election in Iowa1948 United States presidential election in Missouri1948 United States presidential election in Arkansas1948 United States presidential election in Louisiana1948 United States presidential election in Wisconsin1948 United States presidential election in Illinois1948 United States presidential election in Michigan1948 United States presidential election in Indiana1948 United States presidential election in Ohio1948 United States presidential election in Kentucky1948 United States presidential election in Tennessee1948 United States presidential election in Mississippi1948 United States presidential election in Alabama1948 United States presidential election in Georgia1948 United States presidential election in Florida1948 United States presidential election in South Carolina1948 United States presidential election in North Carolina1948 United States presidential election in Virginia1948 United States presidential election in West Virginia1948 United States presidential election in Maryland1948 United States presidential election in Delaware1948 United States presidential election in Pennsylvania1948 United States presidential election in New Jersey1948 United States presidential election in New York1948 United States presidential election in Connecticut1948 United States presidential election in Rhode Island1948 United States presidential election in Maryland1948 United States presidential election in Vermont1948 United States presidential election in New Hampshire1948 United States presidential election in Maine1948 United States presidential election in Massachusetts1948 United States presidential election in Maryland1948 United States presidential election in Delaware1948 United States presidential election in New Jersey1948 United States presidential election in Connecticut1948 United States presidential election in Rhode Island1948 United States presidential election in Massachusetts1948 United States presidential election in Vermont1948 United States presidential election in New Hampshire
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Dewey/Warren, blue denotes those won by Truman/Barkley, orange denotes those won by Thurmond/Wright, including a Tennessee faithless elector. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.

President before election

Harry S. Truman
Democratic

Elected President

Harry S. Truman
Democratic

The 1948 United States presidential election was the 41st quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1948. In one of the greatest election upsets in American history,[2][3][4] incumbent President Harry S. Truman, the Democratic nominee, defeated heavily favored Republican Governor of New York Thomas E. Dewey, and third-party candidates, becoming the third president to succeed to the presidency upon his predecessor's death and be elected to a full term.[a]

Truman had been elected vice president in the 1944 election and succeeded to the presidency in April 1945 upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He won his party's nomination at the 1948 Democratic National Convention only after defeating attempts to drop him from the ticket. The convention's civil rights plank caused a walk-out by several Southern delegates, who launched a third-party "Dixiecrat" ticket led by Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. The Dixiecrats hoped to win enough electoral votes to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives, where they could extract concessions from either Dewey or Truman in exchange for their support. Truman also faced a challenge from his party in the form of former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who launched the Progressive Party and challenged Truman's confrontational Cold War policies. Dewey, who was the leader of his party's liberal eastern wing and had been the 1944 Republican presidential nominee, defeated Senator Robert A. Taft and other challengers at the 1948 Republican National Convention. This was the first election to have primary and general election debates, with Dewey debating Harold Stassen in the Republican primary while Norman Thomas debated Farrell Dobbs in the general election.[5]

Truman's feisty campaign style energized his base of traditional Democrats, consisting of most of the white South, as well as labor unions, and Catholic and Jewish voters; he also fared surprisingly well with Midwestern farmers.[6] Dewey ran a low-risk campaign and largely avoided directly criticizing Truman. With the three-way split in the Democratic Party, and with Truman's low approval ratings, Truman was widely considered to be the underdog in the race, and virtually every prediction (with or without public opinion polls) indicated that Dewey would win the election. Defying these predictions, Truman won the election with 303 electoral votes to Dewey's 189. Truman also won 49.6% of the popular vote compared to Dewey's 45.1%, while the third-party candidacies of Thurmond and Wallace each won less than 3% of the popular vote, with Thurmond carrying four southern states. Truman's surprise victory was the fifth consecutive presidential win for the Democratic Party, the longest winning streak for the Democrats, and the longest for either party since the 1880 election.

With simultaneous success in the 1948 congressional elections, the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress, which they had lost in 1946. Thus, Truman's election confirmed the Democratic Party's status as the nation's majority party. This was the last presidential election before the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment in 1951, limiting the number of times future presidents may be elected to the presidency. This did not apply to the incumbent Truman, but as he chose not to run in 1952, this was the last presidential election with no future disqualification effect for second-term winners.[7]

  1. ^ "National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789-Present". United States Election Project. CQ Press.
  2. ^ American Experience. "General Article: Presidential Politics". PBS. Archived from the original on February 21, 2017. Retrieved September 17, 2017.
  3. ^ Rosegrant, Susan (April 18, 2012). University of Michigan (ed.). "ISR and the Truman/Dewey upset". isr.umich.edu. Archived from the original on April 2, 2013.
  4. ^ Cosgrove, Ben (October 21, 2012). "Behind the Picture: 'DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN'". Time. Archived from the original on October 22, 2012.
  5. ^ "Should Minor Party & Independent Presidential Candidates "Debate Down"? Lessons of 1948". Ballot Access News. October 19, 2008. Archived from the original on March 23, 2021.
  6. ^ DiSalvo, Daniel (2010). "The Politics of a Party Faction: The Liberal-Labor Alliance in the Democratic Party, 1948–1972". Journal of Policy History. 22 (3): 269–299. doi:10.1017/S0898030610000114. S2CID 154735666.
  7. ^ Paul Kleppner et al. The Evolution of American Electoral Systems (1981) pp. 203–42


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