A presidential election was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1944. The election took place during World War II, which ended the following year. The Democratic ticket of incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Senator Harry Truman defeated the Republican ticket of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey and Ohio Governor John Bricker, to win an unprecedented fourth term. It was also the fifth presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1860, 1904, 1920, 1940, and 2016. Though the margin of victory was still a landslide, this was Roosevelt's weakest performance in his four elections, and the popular vote split was less lopsided.
Roosevelt had become the first president to win a third term with his victory in the 1940 presidential election, with little doubt that he would seek a fourth term. Unlike in 1940, Roosevelt faced little opposition within his own party, and he easily won the presidential nomination of the 1944 Democratic National Convention. Concerned that Roosevelt's ill health would mean the vice president would likely become president, the convention dropped Roosevelt's vice president Henry A. Wallace in favor of the lesser known Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri. Governor Dewey of New York emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination after his victory in the Wisconsin primary, and he defeated conservative Governor John W. Bricker at the 1944 Republican National Convention.
As World War II was going well for the United States and the Allies, Roosevelt remained popular despite his long tenure. Dewey campaigned against the New Deal and for a smaller government but was ultimately unsuccessful in convincing the country to change course. The election was closer than Roosevelt's other presidential campaigns, but Roosevelt still won by a 7.5 percentage point margin in the popular vote and by a wide margin in the Electoral College. Rumors of Roosevelt's ill health, although somewhat dispelled by his vigorous campaigning, proved to be true; Roosevelt died less than three months into his fourth term and was succeeded by Truman. Roosevelt would be the last major party candidate to have been nominated by their party for three or more consecutive presidential elections until Donald Trump in 2024.
Nominations
Democratic Party nomination
President Roosevelt was the popular, wartime incumbent and faced little formal opposition. Although many Southern Democrats mistrusted Roosevelt's racial policies, he brought enormous war activities to the region and the end of its marginal status was in sight. No major figure opposed Roosevelt publicly, and he was re-nominated easily when the Democratic Convention met in Chicago. Some pro-segregationist delegates tried to unite behind Virginia senator Harry F. Byrd, but he refused to campaign actively against Roosevelt, and did not get enough delegates to seriously threaten the President's chances.
The obvious physical decline in the president's appearance, as well as rumors of secret health problems, led many delegates and party leaders to strongly oppose Vice President Henry A. Wallace for a second term. Opposition to Wallace came especially from Catholic leaders in big cities and moderate Democrats. Wallace, who had been Roosevelt's vice president since January 1941, was regarded by most conservatives as being too left-wing and personally eccentric to be next in line for the presidency. He had performed so poorly as economic coordinator that Roosevelt had to remove him from that post. Numerous moderate party leaders privately sent word to Roosevelt that they would fight Wallace's re-nomination as vice president and proposed instead Senator Harry S. Truman, a moderate from Missouri. Truman was highly visible as the chairman of a Senate wartime committee investigating fraud and inefficiency in the war program. Roosevelt, who personally liked Wallace and knew little about Truman, agreed reluctantly to accept Truman as his running mate to preserve party unity. Even so, many delegates on the left refused to abandon Wallace, and they voted for him on the first ballot. However, enough large Northern, Midwestern, and Southern states supported Truman to give him victory on the second ballot. The fight over the vice-presidential nomination proved to be consequential; the ticket won and Roosevelt died in April 1945, and Truman instead of Wallace became the nation's thirty-third president.
Republican Party
As 1944 began, the frontrunners for the Republican nomination appeared to be Wendell Willkie, the party's 1940 dark horse nominee, Senator Robert A. Taft from Ohio, the leader of the party's conservatives, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the leader of the party's moderate eastern establishment, General Douglas MacArthur, then serving as an Allied commander in the Pacific theater of the war, and former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, then serving as a U.S. naval officer in the Pacific. Taft surprised many by declining to run for president as he wanted to remain in the Senate; instead, he voiced his support for a fellow Ohio conservative, Governor John W. Bricker.
With Taft out of the race some Republican conservatives favored General MacArthur. However, MacArthur's chances were limited by the fact that he was leading Allied forces against Japan, and thus could not campaign for the nomination. His supporters entered his name in the Wisconsin primary nonetheless. The Wisconsin primary proved to be the key contest, as Dewey won by a surprisingly wide margin. He took fourteen delegates to four for Harold Stassen, while MacArthur won the three remaining delegates. Willkie was shut out in the Wisconsin primary; he did not win a single delegate. His unexpectedly poor showing in Wisconsin forced him to withdraw as a candidate for the nomination. However, at the time of his sudden death in early October 1944, Willkie had endorsed neither Dewey nor Roosevelt. At the 1944 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Dewey easily overcame Bricker and was nominated for president on the first ballot. Dewey, a moderate to liberal Republican, chose the conservative Bricker as his running mate. Dewey originally preferred fellow liberal California Governor Earl Warren, but agreed on Bricker to preserve party unity (Warren would go on to run with Dewey in the 1948 election). Bricker was nominated for vice president by acclamation.
General election
Fall campaign
The Republicans campaigned against the New Deal, seeking a smaller government and less-regulated economy as the end of the war seemed in sight. Nonetheless, Roosevelt's continuing popularity was the main theme of the campaign. To quiet rumors of his poor health, Roosevelt insisted on making a vigorous campaign swing in October and rode in an open car through city streets.
Numerous campaign songs for F.D.R. were written, possibly in an effort to advertise on radio during radio's Golden Age. These included 1940's "Franklin D. Roosevelt's Back Again" and "Mister Roosevelt, Won't You Please Run Again." In 1944, Broadway actress Mary Crane Hone published piano march "Let's Re-Re-Re-Elect Roosevelt." Its lyrics were:
Let's make each one of our blows felt
For the causes of humanity and war.
With world peace just around the corner,
His leadership is necessary still.
So - Let's Re-Re-Re-Elect Roosevelt...
A high point of the campaign occurred when Roosevelt, speaking to a meeting of labor union leaders, gave a speech carried on national radio in which he ridiculed Republican claims that his administration was corrupt and wasteful with tax money. He particularly derided a Republican claim that he had sent a US Navy warship to pick up his Scottish Terrier Fala in Alaska, noting that "Fala was furious" at such rumors. The speech was met with loud laughter and applause from the labor leaders. In response, Governor Dewey gave a blistering partisan speech in Oklahoma City a few days later on national radio, in which he accused Roosevelt of being "indispensable" to corrupt big-city Democratic organizations and American Communists; he also referred to members of Roosevelt's cabinet as a "motley crew". However, American battlefield successes in Europe and the Pacific during the campaign, such as the liberation of Paris in August 1944 and the successful Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in October 1944, made President Roosevelt unbeatable.
Results
Throughout the campaign, Roosevelt led Dewey in all the polls by varying margins. On election day, the Democratic incumbent scored a fairly comfortable victory over his Republican challenger. Roosevelt took 36 states for 432 electoral votes (266 were needed to win), while Dewey won twelve states and 99 electoral votes. In the popular vote, Roosevelt won 25,612,916 (53.4%) votes to Dewey's 22,017,929 (45.9%). Dewey conceded in a radio address the following morning, but declined to personally call or to send a telegram to President Roosevelt. Roosevelt sent Dewey a telegram reading, "I thank you for your statement, which I heard over the air a few minutes ago." Roosevelt's victory made him the only person ever to win the presidential popular vote four times, and neither party would again win the popular vote four consecutive times until the Democrats did so in all four elections from 2008 to 2020.
The important question had been which leader, Roosevelt or Dewey, should be chosen for the critical days of peacemaking and reconstruction following the war's conclusion. Most American voters concluded that they should retain the governing party, and particularly the president who represented it. They also felt it unsafe to do so in "wartime", in view of ever-increasing domestic disagreements.
Dewey did better against Roosevelt than any of Roosevelt's previous three Republican opponents: Roosevelt's percentage and margin of the total vote were both less than in 1940. Dewey flipped the states of Wyoming, Wisconsin, and Ohio from the previous election, while Roosevelt flipped Michigan. Dewey also gained the personal satisfaction of finishing ahead of Roosevelt in his hometown of Hyde Park, New York, and ahead of Truman in his hometown of Independence, Missouri. Dewey would again become the Republican presidential nominee in 1948, challenging President Truman (who had assumed that office on FDR's death), and would again lose, though by somewhat smaller popular- and electoral-vote margins.
Roosevelt's net vote totals in the twelve largest cities increased from 2,112,000 votes in the 1940 election to 2,230,000 votes. Of the 3,095 counties/independent cities making returns, Roosevelt won the most popular votes in 1,751 (56.58%) while Dewey carried 1,343 (43.39%). The Texas Regular ticket carried one county (0.03%). In New York, only the combined support of the American Labor and Liberal parties (pledged to Roosevelt but otherwise independent of the Democrats to maintain their identities) enabled Roosevelt to win the electoral votes of his home state.
In 1944, the constantly growing Southern protest against Roosevelt's leadership became clearest in Texas, where 135,553 people voted against Roosevelt but not for the Republican ticket. The Texas Regular ticket resulted from a split in the Democratic Party in its two state conventions, May 23 and September 12, 1944. This ticket, which represented the Democratic element opposing the re-election of President Roosevelt, called for the "restoration of states' rights which have been destroyed by the Communist New Deal" and "restoration of the supremacy of the white race". Its electors were uninstructed.
Results
Until 1996 this was the last time in which an incumbent Democratic president won re-election after serving a full term in office. This was also the last election until 2012 in which the incumbent Democratic president received over 50 percent of the popular vote after receiving over 50 percent of it in the previous election. As of 2026, this was the most recent presidential election in which a Democratic ticket has won every state of the former Confederacy as well as the entire southern region. This was the first election since 1892 that a Democrat won without taking Wyoming and Ohio. Roosevelt is the only president to serve for more than two terms; in 1951, the Twenty-second Amendment was ratified, limiting the number of terms a person may be president.
As he had in 1940, Roosevelt was the third of just four presidents in United States history to win re-election with a lower percentage of the electoral vote than in their prior elections; the other three are James Madison in 1812, Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and Barack Obama in 2012. Additionally, Roosevelt was the fourth of only five presidents to win re-election with a smaller percentage of the popular vote than in prior elections; the other four are Madison in 1812, Andrew Jackson in 1832, Grover Cleveland in 1892, and Obama in 2012.
This is the last election in which New Hampshire and Oregon voted Democratic until 1964 and the last in which Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania did so until 1960.
The 432 electoral votes received by Roosevelt, added to the 449 electoral votes he received in 1940, and the 523 electoral votes he received in 1936, and the 472 electoral votes he received in 1932, gave him the most total electoral votes received by any candidate who was elected to the office of president, since he is the only president to serve more than two terms (1,876).
Source (popular vote): Leip, David. "1944 Presidential Election Results". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved August 1, 2005.Source (electoral vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved August 1, 2005.
Geography of results
States that flipped from Democratic to Republican
States that flipped from Republican to Democratic
Close states
Margin of victory less than 1% (25 electoral votes):
- Ohio, 0.37% (11,530 votes)
Margin of victory less than 5% (165 electoral votes):