Election of 1948

After the Great Depression and World War II, America was in a rocky transition. The 1950s are most often remembered as a period of economic prosperity, but also strife due to the Civil Rights struggles. The economic improvements of the New Deal and WWII did not lead straight into the 1950s economic boom, though. America was struggling to gain its footing as a peacetime economy. How did the move towards Civil Rights and the changing economy factor into the resilient, but fractured, Democratic Party's 1948 election victory? Keep reading to learn more about the candidates, significance, and more.

Fig.1 - 1948 Presidential Election Cartoon

Election of 1948 Candidates

Incumbent Democrat President Harry S. Truman faced off against Republican Thomas E. Dewey, and a splintering of his own party with Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond and Progressive Henry A. Wallace.

Harry S. Truman

Thrust into the presidency from the vice presidency upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) in 1945, Truman was now his own candidate in 1948.

Fig.2 - Harry Truman

When he took the presidency, he had had very little conversation with FDR, and hadn't discussed the important issues like relations with foreign leaders or the existence of the Manhattan Project. Truman was greeted with new challenge after new challenge, such as ending WWII in Europe, whether to drop the atomic bomb, and the new Cold War. Without the enormous popularity of FDR to buoy him, Americans were uncertain if the former haberdasher from Missouri was capable of leading the United States.

Thomas E. Dewey

Thomas E. Dewey made a name for himself as a prosecutor and a district attorney for his prosecutions of high-profile Mafia figures in the 1930s, leading to his election as Governor of New York in 1942.

Fig.3 Tomas E. Dewey

Dewey represented a more moderate wing of the Republican Party, supporting Anti-Communism but also in favor of some of the social welfare policies enacted under the New Deal. As governor, he supported a number of progressive policies such as education spending, creation of a state university, anti-racial discrimination laws, public housing creation, and expansion of mental health care. He also achieved a budget surplus and worked to attract new businesses to the state, in what he called "pay as you go liberalism". He had first attempted to gain the Republican nomination in 1940, before succeeding in 1948, but was unable to unseat incumbent Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Strom Thurmond

Strom Thurmond had also been a WWII military officer, South Carolina state senator, and a judge, before he was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1946.

Fig.4 - Strom Thurmond

Politically, he had originally been a strong Franklin Delano Roosevelt supporter, even raising money for the 1932 campaign and attending FDR's inauguration personally. As governor, he was lauded by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for fighting for the arrest of those involved with the lynching of a Black man. In spite of this, his presidential campaign focused heavily on his opposition to federal efforts to end segregation.

Henry Wallace

Wallace had been an earlier vice president to FDR, but was outed from the position because his policies were too progressive for Democratic Party leaders.

Fig.5 - Henry Wallace

Wallace responded by forming a new Progressive Party, which nominated him for President. During the campaign, Wallace would be undermined by connections with accused Communist spies and letters he had written to a Russian spiritual guru, resulting in less than 3% of the popular vote going to Wallace.

Election of 1948: Party Conventions

While FDR commanded an overwhelming popularity that catapulted him into an unmatched 4 presidential election victories, the same was not necessarily true of Truman. The 1948 primaries would see both parties pulled in multiple directions. The Republicans were torn between the conservatives and the moderate Eastern Establishment, but the party held together under the eventual nominee, Thomas E. Dewey. The same was not true of Democrats, whose 1948 convention resulted in a walk out, leading to the splitting off of the Dixiecrats, in addition to the Progressive Party which had been coming together since 1946 but officially organized in 1948.

1948 Democratic Convention

Truman was walking into a hostile situation at the 1948 Democratic Convention. His handling of the transition to a peace time economy was largely considered to be poor, as labor issues and inflation struck, resulting in lowering approval rates and Republican gains during the 1946 midterm elections.

Fig.6 Truman Campaign Button

Within his own party, former Vice President Henry A. Wallace had already broken off to form a new Progressive Party and some major leaders had attempted to woo popular WWII military officer Dwight Eisenhower, who did not accept. Truman's support of adding Civil Rights to the Democratic Party platform caused Strom Thurmond to lead a walkout. Thurmond formed the rivalrous States' Rights Democratic Party, or Dixiecrats, composed of Southern Democrats in favor of maintaining racial segregation as a state's right. Ultimately, Truman was able to hold on to the nomination and bring on Kentucky Senator Alban W. Barkley as his vice.

1948 Republican Convention

Despite being well ahead in the Republican primary polls, Dwight Eisenhower also refused to accept a movement to draft him as the Republican candidate for 1948. The election came down to the moderate Dewey, who favored welfare programs and involvement in the UN, and the conservative Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, who opposed these ideas.

Other candidates like California Governor Earl Warren, and General Douglas MacArthur, who would not run directly but accept the nomination if he won, both failed to achieve a strong enough showing to threaten Dewey. Governor of Minnesota, Harold Stassen, came the closest besides Taft, but made enemies by campaigning against Taft in Ohio and badly lost a major radio debate with Dewey. Dewey's famously well-oiled campaign machine was able to clinch the nomination for him and his Vice Presidential nominee, Earl Warren.

Main Issues of the 1948 Election

The Dewey campaign attempted to coast to victory on Truman's poor approval rating and the Democratic Party splitting in three. Dewey made notoriously vague and meaningless speeches urging unity, in an attempt to simply not cause any scandals which would bring him down to Truman's approval numbers.

Fig.7 - Truman Dewey Political Cartoon

While Dewey's campaign had been well executed in the primaries, it was behind Truman's in the general election, as Truman identified specific messages and voter groups like Black and working-class Americans. The broad issue of the election was social welfare legislation, with Truman arguing that the conservative Republican Congress would not actually support the more liberal ideas laid out by Dewey and the Republican platform. Truman continually presented the Republicans as wealthy elites who took advantage of average Americans.

Election of 1948: Result

Despite being behind in polls for most of the race and almost everyone from the media, to Truman's own wife, believing that Dewey would win, Truman was elected. His margin was decisive enough to even beat the plans of the Dixiecrats to send the election to the House.

Although Republicans had been able to capitalize on Truman's perceived incompetence at handling a peacetime economy in 1946, by 1948 economic conditions had begun to improve again. This, combined with the FDR years, created the perception of the Democrats as bringing prosperity in the voter's minds. Additionally, Truman's Cold War policies were very popular, with the Berlin Air Lift beginning in July 1948 being a popular symbol of American resistance to the USSR.

Election of 1948: Map

The map below shows how each state voted in the Election of 1948.

Fig.8 - 1948 Presidential Election Map

Election of 1948: Significance

One of the most significant outcomes of the election was its reshaping of the understanding of elections. Truman's defeat was thought to be so sure that the Chicago Daily Tribune had famously already printed the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" on election night for the next morning's paper.

James Farley, an FDR campaign manager, was known for his belief that by the summer nominating convention, most people had already decided who they were voting for. By demonstrating that changing polls throughout the fall election season actually mattered, even up to the last minute, popular understanding of voter decision-making was significantly altered.