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On the night of the election of 1948 presidential candidate Thomas Dewey, and the majority of the American public felt sure that Dewey was the new president of the United States. The candidacy of his competitor, Harry S. Truman, who was running for his second term, was cast aside as a long-shot. Newspapers and radios alike endorsed Dewey’s presidency and discussed his inevitable victory in the days and hours before the final election results were announced. According to many contemporaries, “Harry Truman was the only man who truly believed he could win. And he was right.” News of Truman’s victory shocked a nation of non-believers.

Polls leading up to the election showed that Dewey was far ahead of the competition. With the creation of the Gallup Poll in the 1930’s, an effective way of predicting election outcomes and determining public opinion was created. Politicians and the public  relied on Gallup Polls to get an understanding of where the nation stood on important issues. Prior to the election of 1948 Dewey was quoted as saying, “never argue with the Gallup Poll. It has never been wrong and I very much doubt it ever will be”( Thomas E. Dewey 1937-1947: A Study in Political Leadership, Beyer, pg 73).  The American media was just as quick to put all of its faith in pre-election polls. Washington Post journalist Drew Pearson wrote that “Governor Dewey had conducted one of the most astute and skillful campaigns in recent years” and that Truman “cannot possibly win this election.” Another Washington Post article put enormous faith in polling representative voters and said that the likelihood of these representatives being wrong would be a great surprise to the nation. The most famous example of the unquestioning faith the media put in pollsters was the infamous Chicago Tribune headline that read “Dewey Defeats Truman.” 15o,ooo copies of this inaccurate headline were printed.

Americans were shocked at the inaccuracies of the polls that had predicted Dewey overwhelmingly as the favorite candidate. Actual election results showed quite a different story. Dewey was unable to obtain the majority he needed to defeat Truman in key states like Illinois. There are a majority of factors that can account for the inaccuracy of these poll results. First of all, Dewey under-estimated the importance of the African American vote and failed to campaign strongly towards this demographic. In addition, many historians believe that Dewey got lazy in campaigning because of his unwavering faith in the polls, and others believe that the the prediction of an overwhelming victory for Dewey kept some from seeing the need to go out and vote (Simon Topping).

Since then, polling has undergone changes to increase its accuracy. Despite these efforts, the polls often fail to be an accurate indicator of future results. However, no polling innacuracy has ever been quite as dramatic in the eyes of the American public as that of 1948. On November 4, 1948 Truman drove into St. Louis, Missouri after winning the election holding a copy of the mistaken Chicago Tribune headline claiming his defeat. The picture of this event in one of the most iconic photos in the history of American politics and its legacy lives on today.

American Youth Congress poster, 1930s

The election widely considered the most one-sided in the history of presidential politics coincided with a shift from hereditary politics. Mass political student organizing ascended in 1936. But such a surge didn’t necessarily correlate with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decisive victory over Alf Landon, the Republican Governor of Kansas. Instead, students rallied behind Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate. During the American Left’s peak years (1936-39), the movement mobilized at least 500,000 collegians—roughly half of the American student body. In unprecedented numbers, female students were leaving the ideologically conservative party of their parents to join Thomas’s Socialist movement.

During the Great Depression, the majority of female students came from conservative middle-class families. Yet cultural changes caused students to stray from their parents’ conservative values. A study of college students’ social attitudes in 1936 found that many began to adopt a more liberal mindset, and accept dispositions formerly forbidden. Social changes such as “a decline in religious interest,” and “the lifting of taboos among women on sex attraction” caused women to reevaluate their beliefs. Such changes had repercussions on the political sphere leading up to Election Day.

A 1935 autobiographical sketch by Alice Dodge revealed that despite her conservative upbringing, she ultimately joined the Socialist organization, Student League for Industrial Democracy. Her father nearly always voted Republican, as did her mother to display loyalty to her husband. Yet, Alice did not share the same compulsions as her mother. “One by one my parents have seen their four daughters emerge from Vassar no longer Republicans,” Alice explained, saying she personally “belongs to the Socialist Party.”

November 3, 1936, Election Day, signified a sharp shift in inherited politics. In a letter to the editor in LIFE magazine, a female voter reflected on the rise of student momentum. “The first time, in 1932, I voted for [Herbert] Hoover because my mother did,” she said, yet, “the second time, in 1936, I voted for Norman Thomas because at that time I was in a fever of youthful zeal to change the world overnight.”

In hindsight, it is easy to correlate Roosevelt’s triumph with student organizing in the 1930s. However, Roosevelt was not the candidate who galvanized students in ’36. And since Roosevelt became the first Democratic presidential candidate in more than a decade to capture the majority of student voters—48.3 percent—it’s natural to associate him with the mass student movement. This assumption is flawed.

Although Thomas only received 187,720 votes, his ability to mobilize students had a symbolic impact. In a letter to the editor of The New York Times the day after the election, one voter expressed fear of the sudden influx of Socialist views at the College of the City of New York. “When one considers,” he argued, “that Mr. Thomas got 261 from a total of 2,233 votes, it can be well realized that the charge of communism and socialism today is well founded.”

Thomas agreed, and when he was notified of Roosevelt’s overwhelming win, he said, “never was our Socialist message more necessary than today.” The student movement during the mid-1930s served as a precursor to the anti-war student movement of the 1960s. Norman Thomas attributed his 1936 loss to the fact that “too often we vote our fears, not our hopes.” However, the 1936 election signified the moment that many college students began to vote with their hopes, by proving they did fear leaving the party of their parents.

The 1936 Presidential Election in New York City.

Posted on October 11, 2010 by bradmeisel

   http://www.legacyamericana.com/servlet/the-19914/Pinback-button-promoting-Franklin/Detail Copyright, Legacy Americana, LLC.    

   On election day, November 3, 1936, “a crowd estimated by the police at ‘a million’ persons kept Times Square and the theater district in continual uproar last night as news of the President’s reelection flashed from The Times tower” (“Election Crowd in a Merry Mood.” New York Times. 4 November, 1936, 5).            

The 1936 Presidential election pitted Democratic President and former New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt and Vice President John Garner, who were elected in a landslide four years prior, against the Republican ticket of Kansas Governor Alf Landon and Chicago newspaper publisher Frank Knox.  According to historian Michael J. Webber, President Roosevelt’s first term in office saw the emergence of a “new welfare state,” as a result of his agenda of sweeping reforms, known as the New Deal, which were aimed at alleviating the Great Depression.  As a result, the Presidential election “was, in many ways, a referendum on the activist role taken on by the federal government since the inception of the New Deal.”   (Webber, Michael J. New Deal Fat Cats: Business, Labor, and Campaign Finance in the 1936 Presidential Election. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000, 127). 

The New Deal included the creation of Social Security, which provided financial assistance to elderly Americans, the Works Progress Administration, which employed people who were previously unemployed to participate in public works projects, and agencies such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which served to regulate business and protect consumers. 

            On Election Day, the American electorate, comprised of men and women over the age of 21, delivered a clear statement of support for President Roosevelt’s agenda.  The next day, voting returns across the entire nation implied “that more Americans than ever went to the polls” (“A Record Vote.” New York Times. 4 November, 1936, 30). 

In the New York metropolitan area “the President maintained a 3 to 1 ratio” over Landon with heavy turnout, allowing him to carry his home state by one million votes despite “an upsurge of Republican votes” upstate (“President Piles Up 1,000,000 New York Lead.” Associated Press. 4 November, 1936, 1). 

            In the late afternoon on Election Day, throngs of Roosevelt supporters congregated in Times Square to watch as the incoming returns were displayed on The Times Building.  “By 6 P.M. Times Square was comfortably filled,” and within two hours, the crowd spilled out “north of the square.”  When it became evident that the Democratic ticket had emerged victorious, a jubilant celebration erupted, and “streamers flew.”  New York Police Deputy Chief Inspector Patrick Murphy was quoted as saying that “Never in all my years of experience have I seen such a mob of cheering, shouting spectators” (“Election Crowd in a Merry Mood.” New York Times. 4 November, 1936, 5). 

            A similar scene unfolded in Chicago, where “several thousands of Democrats staged a wild victory celebration.”  Democratic campaign workers joined enthusiastic citizens in the festivities after the results became evident.  Revelers “built bonfires in the streets, halted traffic,” and tore “trolley wires off several street cars.”  The swarm of people celebrating the President’s reelection grew so raucous that “extra police were sent to the scene,” in order to prevent “further damage” (“Wild Jubilee Held in Loop by Democrats.” Chicago Tribune, 4 November, 1936, 1). 

            The emphatic affirmation of the New Deal by the electorate in the Presidential Election of 1936, as demonstrated by the avalanche of voter enthusiasm in the New York metropolitan area, was emblematic of the emergence of a new Democratic voting bloc.  According to historian Michael J. Webber, Roosevelt’s landslide victory was a result of the formation of a “New Deal coalition,” which consisted of “organized labor, religious and ethnic minorities, the urban poor, liberals and progressives” (Webber, Michael J. New Deal Fat Cats: Business, Labor, and Campaign Finance in the 1936 Presidential Election. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000, 127). 

The President’s New Deal policies supported organized labor and established welfare programs to assist the urban poor, many of whom were members of the minority groups referred to by Webber, thereby solidifying these individuals’ fervent support for the Democratic party.  As New York and Chicago were two of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas and home to a plethora of ethnic groups and many working and lower class individuals, the President’s enthusiastic support in these cities was a strong indication of the emergence of the New Deal era Democratic constituency, the fruit of which continues to manifest itself in American electoral politics.