What happened when Dewey beat Truman? How did America handle that? Was it a hotly contested race? Was the Electoral vote rather evenly split? I was hoping many in of the SDopers may recall… - Jinx
When was that? President Dewey… I’ve been up since …well too damned long. Seems like I remember it the other way around. :smack:
It ultimately wasn’t that close: more people voted for Truman, and he got more electoral votes. It was a surprise, but no one was upset any more than any other political loss.
But, surely it must have been close when a nationally recognized paper would run such a bold headline claiming Dewey the winner! - Jinx
In those days the exit polls were even worse.
It really wasn’t that close. Truman won by about 2 million popular votes, and got 303 electoral votes to Dewey’s 189, with 39 going to Thurmond. Dewey was just doing better than expected early in the night, and the Tribune got overconfident in their early editions.
To differ with almost everyone above:
The pre-election opinion polls, from the summer right up through mid-October, all called Dewey the winner, and the press fed on each other’s expertise, which was based on these polls, to take some rather supercilious attitudes – including a publicist writing before the election on the composition of Mr. Dewey’s cabinet and another stating that Mr. Truman ought to resign in order to avoid interfering with the will of the people.
Mr. Truman himself was convinced he would win, and even called – accurately – how the electoral vote would fall out.
Contrary to what Captain Amazing said, the Tribune went to press before anything like complete results were in, but with Truman in the lead, but the editor decided to banner “what everybody knew would happen” as the one sure thing about the election.
And just to amplify a bit on what **Polycarp ** said.
Dewey, who had been the nominee in 1944, had a united Republican party behind him. Truman had a seriously fractured bunch of Democrats.
Herny Wallace – who Roosevelt had dumped from the ticket in favor of Truman, bolted the party and ran as an independent. Southern Democrats, led by Strom Thurmond (yes, that Strom Thurmond) had walked out of the convention after passage of a strong Civil Rights platform and Thurmond was ALSO running as an independent.
Conventional wisdom was that Truman, having lost the support of both the liberal and conservative segments of the party, had no chance to defeat Dewey.