A presidential election was held in the United States on November 4, 1952. The Republican ticket of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Richard Nixon defeated the Democratic ticket of Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II and Senator John Sparkman in a landslide victory, becoming the first Republican administration in 20 years. This was the first election since 1928 without an incumbent president on the ballot.
Stevenson emerged victorious on the third presidential ballot of the 1952 Democratic National Convention by defeating Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver, Georgia senator Richard Russell Jr., and other candidates. The Republican nomination was primarily contested by Eisenhower, a general widely popular for his leadership in World War II, and the conservative Ohio senator Robert A. Taft. With the support of Thomas E. Dewey and other party leaders, Eisenhower narrowly prevailed over Taft at the 1952 Republican National Convention. He selected youthful California Senator Richard Nixon as his running mate. In the first televised presidential campaign, Eisenhower was charismatic and very well known, in sharp contrast to Stevenson.
Republicans attacked President Harry S. Truman's handling of the Korean War and the broader Cold War, alleging Soviet spies infiltrated the U.S. government. Democrats faulted Eisenhower for failing to condemn Senators Joseph McCarthy, William E. Jenner, and other reactionary Republicans, who, the Democrats alleged, engaged in reckless and unwarranted attacks. Stevenson tried to separate himself from the unpopular Truman administration. Instead, he campaigned on the popularity of the New Deal and stoked fears of another Great Depression under a Republican administration.
Eisenhower retained his enormous popularity from the war, as was seen in his campaign slogan, "I Like Ike". Eisenhower's public support, coupled with the unpopularity of Truman, allowed him to win comfortably with 55.18% of the popular vote and carry every state outside of the South; he even managed to carry Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas, Southern states that had voted for Democrats since the end of Reconstruction, with the exception of 1928 (Tennessee also voted Republican in 1920). Eisenhower received over 34 million votes, which at the time was the highest popular vote total a presidential candidate had received, surpassing Franklin D. Roosevelt's record in 1936. Republicans gained among Democrats, especially urban and suburban Southerners, and White ethnic groups in the Northeast and Midwest. This was the only election held between 1932 and 2004 without the incumbent president or vice president on the ballot.
Nominees
Republican Party
Republican candidates:
The fight for the Republican nomination was between General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who became the candidate of the party's moderate Eastern Establishment; Senator Robert A. Taft from Ohio, the longtime leader of the party's conservative wing; Governor Earl Warren of California, who appealed to Western delegates and independent voters; and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota, who still had a base of support in the Midwest.
The moderate Eastern Republicans were led by New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the party's presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948. The moderates tended to be interventionists who felt that the country needed to fight the Cold War overseas and confront the Soviet Union in Eurasia. They were also willing to accept most aspects of the social welfare state created by the New Deal in the 1930s but sought to reform the programs to be more efficient and business-friendly. The moderates were also concerned with ending the Republicans' losing streak in presidential elections and felt that the popular Eisenhower had the best chance of beating the Democrats. For that reason, Dewey declined the notion of a third run for president despite his large amount of support within the party. The Republicans had been out of power for 20 years, and there was a strong sentiment that a proper two-party system needed to be re-established. It was also felt that the party winning the White House would have more incentive to rein in radicals and demagogues such as Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy.
The conservative Republicans, led by Taft, were based in the Midwest and parts of the South. The Midwest was a bastion of conservatism and isolationist sentiment. Dislike of Europeans, in particular the British, was common, and there was a widespread feeling that the British manipulated American foreign policy and were eager to kowtow to the Soviet Union, although such attitudes had begun to change among the younger generation who had fought in World War II. In addition, the conservatives opposed much of the New Deal, regarding these programs as diminishing individual liberty and economic freedom. Taft had unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination in the 1940 and 1948 presidential elections but lost both times to moderate candidates from New York: Wilkie and Dewey, respectively. At the age of 63, Taft felt that it was his last chance to run for president, so his friends and supporters, encompassing many party regulars, worked diligently on his behalf. His feelings were correct, as he died about nine months after the election.
Warren, although highly popular in California, refused to campaign in the presidential primaries, which limited his chances of winning the nomination. He retained the support of the California delegation, and his supporters hoped that in the event of an Eisenhower–Taft deadlock, Warren might emerge as a compromise candidate.
After being persuaded to run, Eisenhower scored a major victory in the New Hampshire primary in which his supporters wrote his name onto the ballot and gave him an upset victory over Taft. However, until the Republican National Convention, the primaries were divided fairly evenly between the two, and when the convention opened, the race for the nomination was still too close to call. Taft won the Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois, and South Dakota primaries, and Eisenhower won those in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Oregon. Stassen and Warren won only their home states of Minnesota and California, respectively, which effectively ended their chances of earning the nomination. General Douglas MacArthur also won the support of ten delegates from various states.
Republican National Convention
When the 1952 Republican National Convention opened in Chicago, most political experts rated Taft and Eisenhower as about equal in delegate vote totals. Eisenhower's managers, led by both Dewey and Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., accused Taft of "stealing" delegate votes in Southern states such as Texas and Georgia, and claimed that Taft's leaders in those states had unfairly denied delegate spots to Eisenhower supporters, putting Taft delegates in their place. Lodge and Dewey proposed to evict the Taft delegates in those states and replace them with Eisenhower delegates and called the proposal "Fair Play". Although Taft and his supporters angrily denied that charge, the convention voted to support Fair Play 658 to 548, and Taft lost many Southern delegates. Eisenhower's chances were boosted when several uncommitted state delegations, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, decided to support him and also when Stassen released his delegates and asked them to support Eisenhower. The removal of many Southern delegates and the support of the uncommitted states decided the nomination in Eisenhower's favor.
However, the convention was among the most bitter and emotional in American history. When Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois, a Taft supporter, pointed at Dewey on the convention floor during a speech and accused him of leading the Republicans "down the road to defeat", mixed boos and cheers rang out from the delegates, and there were even fistfights between some Taft and Eisenhower delegates.
In the end, Eisenhower narrowly defeated Taft on the first ballot. To heal the wounds caused by the battle, he visited Taft's hotel suite and met with him. Taft issued a brief statement congratulating Eisenhower on his victory, but he was bitter about the accusation that he had stolen delegates and withheld his active support for Eisenhower for several weeks after the convention. In September 1952, Taft and Eisenhower met again at Morningside Heights, in New York City. Taft promised there an active support of Eisenhower in exchange for the fulfillment of a number of requests such as a demand that Eisenhower would offer Taft's followers a fair share of patronage positions if he won the election and that Eisenhower would agree to balance the federal budget and "fight creeping domestic socialism in every field". Eisenhower agreed to the terms, and Taft campaigned assiduously for the Republican ticket. In fact, Eisenhower and Taft agreed on most domestic issues, and their disagreements were primarily on foreign policy.
Though there were initial suggestions that Warren could earn the party's vice-presidential slot for the second successive election if he withdrew and endorsed Eisenhower, he ultimately chose not to do so. Eisenhower wished to award the vice-presidential nod to Stassen, who had endorsed Eisenhower and held generally similar political positions. However, the party bosses wanted to find a running mate who could mollify Taft's supporters, as the schism between the moderate and conservative wings was so severe that it was feared that party's conservatives would run Taft as a third-party candidate.
Eisenhower had apparently given little thought to choosing his running mate. When asked, he replied that he assumed the convention would pick someone. The spot ultimately fell to the young California Senator Richard Nixon, who was viewed as a centrist. Nixon was known as an aggressive campaigner and a fierce anti-communist but as one who shied away from some of the more extreme ideas of the party's right wing, including isolationism and the dismantling of the New Deal. Most historians now believe that Eisenhower's nomination was the result of his perceived electability against the Democrats. Most of the delegates were conservatives who would probably have supported Taft if they felt that he could win the general election.
Though not earning the presidential or the vice-presidential nominations, Warren would be appointed as Chief Justice of the United States in October 1953, and Stassen would hold various positions within Eisenhower's administration.
The balloting at the Republican convention went as follows:
Democratic Party
Democratic candidates:
The expected candidate for the Democratic nomination was the incumbent President Harry S. Truman. Since the newly passed 22nd Amendment did not apply to whomever was president at the time of its passage, he was eligible to run again. However, Truman entered 1952 with his popularity plummeting, according to polls. The bloody and indecisive Korean War was dragging into its third year, Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist crusade was stirring public fears of an encroaching "Red Menace", and the disclosure of widespread corruption among federal employees (including some high-level members of the Truman administration) left Truman at a low political ebb. Polls showed that he had a 66% disapproval rating, a record that would be matched only decades later by Richard Nixon and surpassed by George W. Bush.
Truman's main opponent was the populist Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, who had chaired a nationally televised investigation of organized crime in 1951 and was known as a crusader against crime and corruption. The Gallup poll of February 15 showed Truman's weakness. Nationally, Truman was the choice of only 36% of Democrats, compared with 21% for Kefauver. Among independent voters, however, Truman had only 18%, and Kefauver led with 36%. In the New Hampshire primary, Kefauver upset Truman by winning 19,800 votes to Truman's 15,927 and capturing all eight delegates. Kefauver graciously said that he did not consider his victory "a repudiation of Administration policies, but a desire ... for new ideas and personalities". Stung by that setback, however, Truman announced March 29 that he would not seek re-election. Truman insisted in his memoirs, however, that he had decided not to run for re-election well before his defeat to Kefauver.
With Truman's withdrawal, Kefauver became the frontrunner for the nomination, and he won most of the primaries. Other primary winners were Senator Hubert Humphrey, who won his home state of Minnesota; Senator Richard Russell Jr. from Georgia, who won the Florida primary, and the diplomat W. Averell Harriman, who won the Washington D.C. contest. However, most states still chose their delegates to the Democratic Convention by state conventions, which meant that the party bosses, especially the mayors and governors of large Northern and Midwestern states and cities, were able to choose the Democratic nominee. The bosses, including Truman himself, strongly disliked Kefauver since his investigations of organized crime had revealed connections between American Mafia figures and many of the big-city Democratic political organizations. The party bosses thus viewed Kefauver as a maverick who could not be trusted and so refused to support him for the nomination.
Instead, with Truman taking the initiative, they began to search for other more acceptable candidates. However, most of the other candidates had a major weakness. Russell had much Southern support, but his support of racial segregation and his opposition to civil rights for black people led many liberal Northern and Midwestern delegates, pressed by their many black voters, to reject him. Truman favored Harriman of New York, but the latter had never held an elective office and was inexperienced in politics. Truman next turned to Vice President Alben W. Barkley but, at 74, he was rejected as being too old by leaders of labor unions. Other minor or favorite son candidates included Oklahoma Senator Robert S. Kerr, Massachusetts Governor Paul A. Dever, Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, and Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright.