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1948 United States elections

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Field	Value
year	1948
type	Presidential election year
election_day	November 2
incumbent_president	Harry S. Truman (Democratic)
next_congress	[81st](81st-united-states-congress)
president_control	Democratic hold
president_candidate1	Harry S. Truman (D)
electoral_vote1	303
president_candidate2	Thomas E. Dewey (R)
electoral_vote2	189
president_candidate3	Strom Thurmond (SRD)
electoral_vote3	39
president_pv_margin	Democratic +4.5%
president_map
president_map_caption	1948 presidential election results. Red denotes states won by Dewey, blue denotes states won by Truman, and orange denotes states won by Thurmond. Numbers indicate the electoral votes won by each candidate.
senate_seats_contested	33 of 96 seats
(32 Class 2 seats + 2 special elections)
senate_control	Democratic gain
senate_net_change	Democratic +9
senate_map
senate_map_caption	1948 Senate results
house_seats_contested	All 435 voting members
house_control	Democratic gain
house_pv_margin	Democratic +7.2%
house_net_change	Democratic +75
house_map	[[File:1948 United States House elections.svg	320px]]
house_map_caption	1948 House election results
governor_seats_contested	33
governor_net_change	Democratic +6
governor_map
governor_map_caption	1948 gubernatorial election results

(32 Class 2 seats + 2 special elections)

Elections were held on November 2, 1948. The election took place during the beginning stages of the Cold War. Democratic incumbent President Harry S. Truman was elected to a full term defeating Republican nominee New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey and two erstwhile Democrats. The Democrats won back control of Congress from the Republicans. Until 2020, Democrats would never again flip a chamber of Congress in a presidential election cycle.

In the presidential election, President Truman ran for reelection despite being widely seen, even by fellow Democrats, as a vulnerable incumbent who was too risky for the party to nominate, but he ultimately won his party's nomination. In the fight for the Republican nomination, Thomas E. Dewey, who lost the previous presidential election, was renominated. In the end, Truman won the presidential election over Dewey in an upset.

In the congressional elections, the Democratic Party benefited from the coattails of Truman's victory and retook Congress. In the Senate, the Democrats took nine seats from the Republicans, regaining control of the chamber. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats won the national popular vote by a margin of 7.2 percentage points, flipped 75 seats from the Republicans, and won a sizable majority in the chamber; a large swing in the House of Representatives would not occur again until 2010.

In the gubernatorial elections, Democrats won six seats from the Republicans and won a majority of gubernatorial offices, Puerto Rico also elected Luis Muñoz Marín of the Popular Democratic Party as its first democratically elected governor.

President

Main article: 1948 United States presidential election

In what is considered by most historians as the greatest upset in the history of American presidential politics, Democratic incumbent President Harry S. Truman defeated Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey. Going into Election Day, virtually every prediction (with or without public opinion polls) indicated that Truman would lose. Truman took most states outside the Northeast and Deep South, and won the popular vote by four points. Dewey won his party's nomination for the second straight election, defeating Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft and former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen on the Republican convention's second ballot. Truman won the Democratic nomination on the first ballot, but the party's platform on civil rights caused a third party run by Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, the Governor of South Carolina. Thurmond took four states in the Deep South. Former Vice President and former Democrat Henry A. Wallace ran as the Progressive nominee, but took only two percent of the popular vote.

United States House of Representatives

Main article: 1948 United States House of Representatives elections

As in the Senate, Truman's labeling of the Republican-controlled Congress as "obstructionist" helped the Democrats win a net gain of 75 seats in the House, giving them control of the chamber.

Future president Gerald Ford won his first election in this year, being elected to Michigan's 5th congressional district.

United States Senate

Main article: 1948 United States Senate elections

The Democrats gained nine seats in the Senate, enough to give them control of the chamber over the Republicans. Truman successfully campaigned against an "obstructionist" Congress that had blocked many of his initiatives. In addition, the U.S. economy had recovered from the postwar recession of 1946–1947.

References

One Class 2 Senate seat held both a regularly-scheduled election and a special election in 1948. This seat is not double-counted for the number of total seats.
"1948 Presidential Election". The American Presidency Project.
"Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 2, 1948". U.S. House of Reps, Office of the Clerk.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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