United States presidential election, 1944

United States presidential election, 1944

November 7, 1944

531 electoral votes of the Electoral College 266 electoral votes needed to win   Nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt Thomas E. Dewey Party Democratic Republican Home state New York New York Running mate Harry S. Truman John W. Bricker Electoral vote 432 99 States carried 36 12 Popular vote 25,612,916 22,017,929 Percentage 53.4% 45.9%

Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Dewey/Bricker, Blue denotes those won by Roosevelt/Truman. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.

President before election Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic Elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic

The United States presidential election of 1944 was the 40th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1944. Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought his fourth term in office; he was challenged by Republican Thomas E. Dewey.

The election was set in the backdrop of World War II, which was going well for the United States and its Allies. Roosevelt had already served longer than any other president, but remained popular. Unlike in 1940, there was little doubt that he would run for another term as the Democratic candidate. Dewey, the Governor of New York, campaigned against the New Deal and for a smaller government, but was ultimately unsuccessful in convincing the country to change course. Rumors of Roosevelt's ill health, though somewhat dispelled by his vigorous campaigning, proved to be prescient; Roosevelt would die and be replaced by his new Vice President, Harry S. Truman, within a half-year of winning re-election.

Nominations

Republican Party

Republican candidates:

• Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York
• Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio
• Representative Everett Dirksen of Illinois
• General Douglas MacArthur of New York
• Former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota
• Businessman Wendell Willkie of New York

• Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York

• Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio

• Representative Everett Dirksen of Illinois

• General Douglas MacArthur of New York

• Former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota

• Businessman Wendell Willkie of New York

As 1944 began, the frontrunners for the Republican nomination appeared to be Wendell Willkie, the party's 1940 candidate, Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the leader of the party's conservatives, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the leader of the party's moderate eastern establishment, General Douglas MacArthur, then serving as an Allied commander in the Pacific theater of the war, and former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, then serving as a U.S. naval officer in the Pacific. Taft surprised many by announcing that he was not a candidate; instead, he voiced his support for a fellow conservative, Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio. With Taft out of the race some Republican conservatives favored General MacArthur. However, MacArthur's chances were limited by the fact that he was leading Allied forces against Japan, and thus could not campaign for the nomination. His supporters entered his name in the Wisconsin primary nonetheless. The Wisconsin primary proved to be the key contest, as Dewey won by a surprisingly wide margin. He took 14 delegates to four for Harold Stassen, while MacArthur won the three remaining delegates. Willkie was shut out in the Wisconsin primary; he did not win a single delegate. His unexpectedly poor showing in Wisconsin forced him to withdraw as a candidate for the nomination. At the 1944 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, Dewey easily overcame Bricker and was nominated for president on the first ballot. In a bid to maintain party unity, Dewey, a moderate, chose the conservative Bricker as his running mate. Bricker was nominated for vice president by acclamation.

Democratic Party nomination

Democratic candidates:

• Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States from New York

Candidates gallery

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt

• Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia
  (Did not actively run)

Roosevelt/Truman poster

President Roosevelt was a popular, war-time incumbent and faced little formal opposition. Although many Southern Democrats distrusted Roosevelt's racial policies, he brought enormous war activities to the region and the end of its marginal status was in sight. No major figure opposed Roosevelt publicly, and he was re-nominated easily when the Democratic Convention met in Chicago. Some pro-segregationist delegates tried to unite behind Virginia senator Harry F. Byrd, but he refused to actively campaign against Roosevelt, and did not get enough delegates to seriously threaten the President's chances.

The obvious physical decline in the president's appearance, as well as rumors of secret health problems, led many delegates and party leaders to oppose Vice President Henry A. Wallace strongly for a second term. Opposition to Wallace came especially from Catholic leaders in big cities and labor unions. Wallace, who was Roosevelt's vice president since January 1941, was regarded by most conservatives as being too left-wing and personally eccentric to be next in line for the presidency. He had performed so poorly as economic coordinator that Roosevelt had to remove him from that post. Numerous party leaders privately sent word to Roosevelt that they would fight Wallace's re-nomination as vice president and proposed instead Senator Harry S. Truman, a moderate from Missouri. Truman was highly visible as the chairman of a Senate wartime committee investigating fraud and inefficiency in the war program. Roosevelt, who personally liked Wallace and knew little about Truman, reluctantly agreed to accept Truman as his running mate to preserve party unity.^[1] Even so, many delegates on the left refused to abandon Wallace, and they cast their votes for him on the first ballot. However, enough large Northern, Midwestern, and Southern states supported Truman to give him victory on the second ballot. The fight over the vice presidential nomination proved to be consequential; Roosevelt died in April 1945, and Truman became the nation's 33rd President instead of Wallace.^[2]

Source: Richard C. Bain & Judith H. Parris, Convention Decisions and Voting Records (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1973), pp. 266–267.

General election

The Fall Campaign

Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage for the winning candidate. Shades of blue are for Roosevelt (Democratic), shades of red are for Dewey (Republican), and shades of green are for "No Candidate" (Texas Regulars).

The Republicans campaigned against the Paris in August 1944 and the successful Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in October 1944, made Roosevelt unbeatable.

Results

Throughout the campaign, Roosevelt led Dewey in all the polls by various margins. In the election on November 7, 1944, Roosevelt scored a fairly comfortable victory over Dewey. Roosevelt took 36 states for 432 electoral votes, while Dewey won 12 states and 99 electoral votes (266 were needed to win). In the popular vote Roosevelt won 25,612,916 votes to Dewey's 22,017,929. Dewey did better against Roosevelt than any of Roosevelt's previous three Republican opponents, and he did have the personal satisfaction of beating Roosevelt in his hometown of Hyde Park, New York, and of winning Truman's hometown of Independence, Missouri. Dewey would again be the Republican presidential nominee in 1948 and would again lose, though by a much smaller margin.

As he had in 1940, Roosevelt won re-election with a lower percentage of both the electoral vote and the popular vote than he had received in the prior elections—the second of only three presidents in US history to do so, preceded by James Madison in 1812 and followed by Barack Obama in 2012. Andrew Jackson in 1832 and Grover Cleveland in 1892 had received more electoral votes but fewer popular votes, while Woodrow Wilson in 1916 had received more popular votes but fewer electoral votes.

• Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

Results by state

Close states

Margin of victory less than 5% (190 electoral votes):

1. Ohio, 0.37%
2. Michigan, 1.02%
3. New Jersey, 1.35%
4. Wisconsin, 1.80%
5. Wyoming, 2.47%
6. Pennsylvania, 2.78%
7. Missouri, 2.94%
8. Illinois, 3.47%
9. Idaho, 3.49%
10. Maryland, 3.70%
11. New Hampshire, 4.24%
12. Iowa, 4.50%
13. Oregon, 4.85%
14. Maine, 4.99%

Margin of victory between 5% and 10% (138 electoral votes):

1. New York, 5.01%
2. Connecticut, 5.36%
3. Minnesota, 5.55%
4. Indiana, 5.65%
5. Massachusetts, 5.81%
6. Colorado, 6.81%
7. New Mexico, 7.03%
8. North Dakota, 8.35%
9. Delaware, 9.11%
10. Kentucky, 9.23%
11. Nevada, 9.24%
12. Montana, 9.35%
13. West Virginia, 9.78%

Miscellanea

• The 1944 election was the first since Grover Cleveland's re-election in 1892 in which the bellwether state of Ohio backed a losing candidate.
• The 1944 election was the last election in which any candidate received over 90% of the vote in any state (FDR won 94% of votes cast in Mississippi).
• The passing of the 22nd Amendment of the United States Constitution in 1951 renders this election the only occasion in United States history in which a candidate has been allowed to run for a fourth term as president.
• The 1944 presidential race was the only one in history where both candidates hailed from the same county. Roosevelt's home was in Hyde Park, New York. Dewey called Pawling, New York home. Both are in Dutchess County.
• This was the first election since 1900 when Idaho and Wyoming did not vote the same as each other, and the last to date.
• Had Dewey won the 1944 election, he would have become the youngest president in U.S. history, being 20 days younger (as of January 20, 1945) than Theodore Roosevelt, when he took office in 1901 upon the assassination of William McKinley.
• The 1944 presidential election was the last election in which the Democratic party candidate won every single state that constituted the Confederacy.
• The 1944 election was the first one where one of the candidates (Dewey) was born in the 20th century.

See also

• President of the United States
• United States Senate elections, 1944
• United States home front during World War II
• Hell-Bent for Election, an animated Roosevelt campaign film.
• Fourth inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt

References

Further reading

• Cantril, Hadley and Mildred Strunk, eds.; Public Opinion, 1935–1946 (1951), massive compilation of many public opinion polls from USA
• Gallup, George Horace, ed. The Gallup Poll; Public Opinion, 1935–1971 3 vol (1972) esp vol 1; summarizes results of each poll as reported to newspapers
• Hamby, Alonzo L. Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (1995) ch 17
• Jordan, David M. FDR, Dewey, and the Election of 1944 (Indiana U.P. 2011)
• Smith, Richard Norton. Thomas E. Dewey and His Times (1984), the standard scholarly biography
• Weintraub, Stanley. Final Victory: FDR's Extraordinary World War II Presidential Campaign. (Cambridge: Da Capo, 2012). 318 pp.

External links

• 1944 popular vote by counties
• How close was the 1944 election? — Michael Sheppard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology