page_title: Presidency of Harry S. Truman
section_title: 1952 election
hierarchical_section_title: Presidency of Harry S. Truman / Elections / 1952 election
caption_attribution_description: English: Approval Rating for President Truman. Gallup Poll.
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: By the time of the 1952 New Hampshire primary, one of the first major contests held in the 1952 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Truman had not stated whether he would seek re-election, and no other candidate had won Truman's backing. Although the Twenty-second Amendment had been ratified, Truman could run for another term due to a grandfather clause in the amendment. Truman's first choice to succeed him, Chief Justice Vinson, had declined to run, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson had also turned Truman down, Vice President Barkley was considered too old, and Truman disliked Senator Kefauver. Accordingly, Truman let his name be entered in the New Hampshire primary by supporters. The highly unpopular Truman was handily defeated by Kefauver; 18 days later the president announced he would not seek a second full term. Truman was eventually able to persuade Stevenson to run, and the governor ultimately gained the nomination at the 1952 Democratic National Convention.
  General Dwight D. Eisenhower's public stature, along with his unknown views on domestic issues, had made him appealing as a potential candidate for both parties in the 1948 election. Though he had generally supported Truman's foreign policy, Eisenhower privately held conservative views on most domestic issues and never seriously considered running for office as a Democrat. Beginning in 1951, eastern, internationalist Republicans, led by Thomas Dewey and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., coordinated a draft movement designed to nominate Eisenhower as the Republican candidate for president. Eisenhower initially resisted these efforts, but in March 1952 he agreed to allow his name to be entered into the New Hampshire primary. He was motivated in part by his desire to defeat Robert A. Taft, the other major contender for the Republican nomination. The 1952 Republican primaries became a battle between Dewey's internationalist wing of the party and Taft's conservative, isolationist wing. Eisenhower narrowly prevailed over Taft at the 1952 Republican National Convention; with the approval of Eisenhower, the convention nominated Richard Nixon for vice president.
  The once good Truman-Eisenhower relationship soured during the campaign. Truman was appalled when Eisenhower appeared on the same platform with Joseph McCarthy in Wisconsin, and failed to defend General George Marshall, who McCarthy had recently denounced as part of a Communist conspiracy. Similarly, Eisenhower was outraged when Truman, who made a whistle-stop tour in support of Stevenson, accused the former general of disregarding "sinister forces ... Anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-foreignism" within the Republican Party.
  Though Stevenson's public service and issue-oriented campaign appealed to many liberals, he was unable to rally support among blacks, ethnic whites, and the working class. Eisenhower campaigned against what he denounced as Truman's failures: "Korea, Communism and Corruption." Polls consistently indicated that Eisenhower would win the race, and Nixon deftly handled a potentially dangerous controversy over his finances with his Checkers speech, delivered live on national television. In part due to the Checkers speech, television emerged as an important medium in the race; the number of households with televisions had grown from under 200,000 in 1948 to over 15 million in 1952. On election day, as widely expected, Eisenhower defeated Stevenson by a wide margin. Eisenhower took 55.4 percent of the popular vote and won 442 electoral votes, taking almost every state outside of the South. Though Eisenhower ran ahead of most congressional Republicans, his party nonetheless took control of both the House and Senate, giving the Republican Party unified control of Congress and the presidency for the first time since the 1930 elections.
caption: Graph of Truman's approval ratings in Gallup polls
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