page_title: Presidency of Harry S. Truman
section_title: 1948 election
hierarchical_section_title: Presidency of Harry S. Truman / Elections / 1948 election
context_page_description: The presidency of Harry S. Truman began on April 12, 1945, when Harry S. Truman became President of the United States upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and ended on January 20, 1953. He had been Vice President of the United States for only 82 days when he succeeded to the presidency. A Democrat from Missouri, he ran for and won a full four–year term in the 1948 election. Although exempted from the newly-ratified Twenty-second Amendment, Truman did not run again in the 1952 election and was succeeded in office by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.
  Truman's presidency was a turning point in foreign affairs, as the United States engaged in an internationalist foreign policy and renounced isolationism. During his first year in office, Truman approved the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and subsequently accepted the Surrender of Japan, which marked the end of World War II. In the aftermath of World War II, he helped establish the United Nations and other post-war institutions. Relations with the Soviet Union declined after 1945, and by 1947 the two countries had entered a period of geopolitical tension known as the Cold War.
context_section_description: In the spring of 1948, Truman's public approval rating stood at 36%, and the president was nearly universally regarded as incapable of winning reelection in the 1948 presidential election.  The "New Deal" loyalists within the party—including FDR's son James—tried to swing the Democratic nomination to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a highly popular figure whose political views and party affiliation were totally unknown. Other liberals favored Associate Justice William O. Douglas, but both Eisenhower and Douglas refused to enter the race, and the "Stop Truman" movement failed to unite around any other candidate.
  At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Truman attempted to unify the Northern delegations with a vague civil rights plank in the party platform. He was upstaged by liberals like Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey, who convinced Truman and the convention to adopt a stronger civil rights plank. In response, many of the delegates from Alabama and Mississippi walked out of the convention. Unfazed, Truman delivered an aggressive acceptance speech attacking the 80th Congress, labeling it the "Do Nothing Congress." For his running mate, Truman accepted Kentucky Senator Alben W. Barkley after his preferred candidate, Justice William O. Douglas, turned down the nomination.
  South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, a segregationist, declared his candidacy for the presidency on a Dixiecrat ticket and led a full-scale revolt of Southern "states' rights" proponents. This rebellion on the right was matched by one on the left, led by Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket. Wallace strongly criticized Truman's approach to the Soviet Union, and the Progressive Party's platform addressed a wide array of issues, including support for the desegregation of public schools, gender equality, a national health insurance program, free trade, and public ownership of large banks, railroads, and power utilities. Wallace won support from many liberals, intellectuals, union members, and military veterans. The Republicans, meanwhile, nominated New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who had been the party's 1944 presidential nominee.
  Dewey waged a low-risk campaign and issued vague generalities on his plans once in office, while Thurmond found less support in the South than many had expected, as most white Southerners believed him to be too extreme. Wallace was unable to galvanize support behind his domestic policies, and his conciliatory attitude towards the Soviet Union alienated many potential supporters. Truman, meanwhile, crisscrossed the U.S. by train, delivering "whistle stop" speeches from the rear platform of the observation car. His combative appearances, such as those at the town square of Harrisburg, Illinois, captured the popular imagination and drew huge crowds. The large, mostly spontaneous gatherings at Truman's whistle stop events were an important sign of a change in momentum in the campaign, but this shift went virtually unnoticed by the national press corps. The three major polling organizations stopped polling well before the November 2 election date—Roper in September, and Crossley and Gallup in October—thus failing to measure the period when Truman may have surged past Dewey in public support.
  In the end, Truman held his progressive Midwestern base, won most of the Southern states despite the civil rights plank, and squeaked through with narrow victories in a few critical states, notably Ohio, California, and Illinois. He won over 50 percent of the popular vote and secured 303 electoral votes. Dewey received only 189 electoral votes; Thurmond garnered 39, and Henry Wallace none. Dewey carried several Northeastern states that had generally voted for Roosevelt, and the 1948 election was the closest presidential election since the 1916 election. In the concurrent congressional elections, the Democrats re-took control of the House and the Senate. The defining image of the campaign was a photograph snapped in the early morning hours of the day after the election, when an ecstatic Truman held aloft the erroneous front page of the Ch
caption: 1948 electoral vote results.