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I’ve been trying to think of a historical election that mirrored this one. If Trump wins it will be the biggest presidential upset of all time. So I decided to read more about it and what I found was not just a similarity in a upset but a similarity in the campaigns.
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Truman was very unpopular in 1948. This didn’t help matters with a split of vote with Thurman. Truman’s main opposition was GOP NY Governor Thomas Dewey.
Dewey appeared unbeatable polling with a 17 point lead at one point. So much that the GOP told him to play it safe.
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Dewey appeared unbeatable polling with a 17 point lead at one point. So much that the GOP told him to play it safe.
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Dewey’s campaign was vague and bland. Settling on a message of unity, that did not resonate well with the average voter. But again they wanted to play it safe. Here’s a cartoon at the time. The GOP thought they had it in the bag.
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The only person that didn’t think Truman would lose was Truman. He fought for farmers, laborers, American blacks, and the American consumer. Since he was trailing Truman had a no-holds barred campaign. Railing again Dewey at every stop.
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Truman said that the GOP Congress was a do nothing Congress and that the “Communists are rooting for their victory!” Putting a target on the GOP and Dewey while Dewey just kept going hoping to win on the unpopularity of Truman.
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Truman told 80,000 farmers in attendance that "this Republican Congress has already stuck a pitchfork in the farmer's back" to rapturous applause.
Truman was appealing to the common man.
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Truman was appealing to the common man.
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Truman accused, and get this, the GOP of expanding Social Security and government spending. This put rifts between Dewey’s group and the conservative GOP. Truman took advantage of this.
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The visual enthusiasm was tangible with crowds shouting “Give em Hell, Harry!” He kept pushing on going from town to town.
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The last poll had Dewey ahead by 5 points. This was such a lead that Dewey already bought a house in Washington and Truman’s wife Bess had considerable doubts of Harry’s re-election. Truman however predicted that he would win 340 electoral votes.
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Newspaperman Walter Winchell gave Truman 15 to 1 odds of winning the election. Before the election a UK paper wrote an Essay called “Harry Truman: A Study of a Failure”
No one believed he would win. Except Harry and his voters.
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No one believed he would win. Except Harry and his voters.
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The Election Day came and Truman listened to the results roll in and he took an early lead that he never lost. The famous photo was of the pro Republican Chicago Newspaper declaring Dewey the winner. Truman won. 303-108. Winning the popular vote with 49.6%
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In 1948 many pollsters, relying on Farley's Law, believed that the election was effectively over after the Republican and Democratic Conventions, and they discounted the impact of Truman's campaigning that fall.
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After the election, a study by the University of Michigan revealed that "14% of Truman's voters, or 3,374,800, had decided to vote for him in the last fortnight of the campaign."
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Gallup and Roper also did an analysis of the votes, they "learned that one voter in every seven (6,927,000), made up his mind in the last two weeks before the election. Of these, 75 percent picked Truman", which was more than his margin of victory over Dewey.
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The key states in the 1948 election were Ohio, California, and Illinois. Truman narrowly won all three states by a margin of less than one percentage point apiece. These three states had a combined total of 78 electoral votes. Had Dewey carried all three states, he would have won
Journalist Sidney Lubell found in his post-1948 survey of voters that Truman, not Dewey, seemed the safer, more conservative candidate to the "new middle class" that had developed over the previous 20 years
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He wrote that "to an appreciable part of the electorate, the Democrats had replaced the Republicans as the party of prosperity" during and after the war.
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Lubell quoted a man who, when asked why he did not vote Republican after moving to the suburbs, answered "I own a nice home, have a new car and am much better off than my parents were. I've been a Democrat all my life. Why should I change?"
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I could keep going with the striking similarities of these two campaigns and these two candidates, but I wanted to show you, that nothing is new under the sun. History repeats itself. Take nothing for granted. And never give up. #Trump2020
