1948 United States presidential election

The United States presidential election of 1948 was the 41st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1948. Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican nominee, successfully ran against incumbent Harry S Truman, the Democratic nominee. Truman had ascended to the presidency in April 1945 after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Defeating attempts to drop him from the ticket, Truman won the presidential nomination at the 1948 Democratic National Convention. The Democratic convention's civil rights plank caused a walk-out by several Southern delegates, who launched a third-party "Dixiecrat" ticket led by Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. The Dixiecrats hoped to win enough electoral votes to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives, where they could extract concessions from either Dewey or Truman in exchange for their support. Truman also faced a challenge from the left in the form of former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who launched the Progressive Party and challenged Truman's confrontational Cold War policies. Dewey, who was the leader of his party's moderate eastern wing and had been the 1944 Republican presidential nominee, defeated Senator Robert A. Taft and other challengers at the 1948 Republican National Convention.Virtually every prediction indicated that Truman would be defeated by Dewey, which proved to be the case. Both parties had severe ideological splits, with the far left and the far right of the Democratic Party running third-party campaigns, effectively splitting the Democratic vote three ways, and allowing Dewey's easy election.

Dewey won the election with 305 electoral votes to Truman's 187. Dewey also won 49.6% of the vote compared to Truman's 45.1%, while the third party candidacies of Thurmond and Wallace each won less than 3% of the popular vote, with Thurmond carrying four southern states. Truman's loss resulted in the end of 16 years of Democratic control of the presidency, which was the longest streak of victories since 1880.

With simultaneous success in the 1948 congressional elections, the Republicans retained control of both houses of Congress, which they had won in 1946. Thus, Dewey's election confirmed the Republican Party's status as the nation's majority party.

The last election : 1944 Presidential election

The next election : 1952 Presidential election