1952 Democratic Party presidential primaries
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From March 11 to June 3, 1952, voters of the
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...
chose its nominee for president in the
1952 United States presidential election The 1952 United States presidential election was the 42nd quadrennial presidential election and was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1952. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won a landslide victory over Democrat Adlai Stevenson II, which ended 20 year ...
. Although the popular vote proved conclusive, the
1952 Democratic National Convention The 1952 Democratic National Convention was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois from July 21 to July 26, 1952, which was the same arena the Republicans had gathered in a few weeks earlier for their national convention fro ...
held from July 21 to July 26, 1952, in Chicago, Illinois, was forced to go multiballot.


Candidates

The following political leaders were candidates for the 1952 Democratic presidential nomination:


Major candidates

These candidates participated in multiple state primaries or were included in multiple major national polls.


Competing in primaries


Bypassing primaries

The following candidates did not place their name directly on the ballot for any state's presidential primary, but may have sought to influence the selection of un-elected delegates or sought the support of uncommitted delegates.


Favorite sons

The following candidates ran only in their home state's primary or caucus for the purpose of controlling its delegate slate at the convention and did not appear to be considered national candidates by the media. *State Attorney General Pat Brown of California *Senator
Robert J. Bulkley Robert Johns Bulkley (October 8, 1880July 21, 1965) was an American attorney and politician from Ohio. A Democrat, he served in the United States House of Representatives, and in the United States Senate from 1930 until 1939. Life and career Bu ...
of Ohio *Mayor Jerome F. Fox of Wisconsin *Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas *Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota *Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut *Senator
James E. Murray James Edward Murray (May 3, 1876March 23, 1961) was an American politician and United States Senator from Montana, and a liberal leader of the Democratic Party. He served in the United States Senate from 1934 until 1961. Background Born on a f ...
of Montana *Senator
Matthew M. Neely Matthew Mansfield Neely (November 9, 1874January 18, 1958) was an American Democratic Party (United States), Democratic politician from West Virginia. He is the only West Virginian to serve in both houses of the United States Congress and as the ...
of West Virginia *Governor
G. Mennen Williams Gerhard Mennen "Soapy" Williams (February 23, 1911 – February 2, 1988) was an American politician who served as the List of governors of Michigan, 41st governor of Michigan, elected in 1948 and serving six two-year terms in office. He lat ...
of Michigan


Polling


National polling


Before 1951


1951


1952


Primary race

The 1952 primary season was one of only two where a challenge to an incumbent president of either party was successful, the other being 1968. Prior to this, the last incumbent to try and fail to win his party's nomination was Chester Arthur in 1884 on the Republican side, and
Andrew Johnson Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Dem ...
in 1868 on the Democratic.


The decline and fall of President Truman

The expected candidate for the Democratic nomination was incumbent President
Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
. However, Truman entered 1952 with his opinion poll popularity plummeting. The bloody and indecisive Korean War was dragging into its third year, Senator
Joseph McCarthy Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visi ...
's anti-Communist crusade was stirring public fears of an encroaching “Red Menace”, and the disclosure of widespread corruption among federal employees (including some high-level members of Truman's administration) left Truman at a low political ebb. Truman's main opponent was populist Tennessee Senator
Estes Kefauver Carey Estes Kefauver (; July 26, 1903 – August 10, 1963) was an American politician from Tennessee. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1939 to 1949 and in the Senate from 1949 until his d ...
, who had chaired a nationally televised investigation of organized crime in 1951 and was known as a crusader against crime and corruption. The Gallup poll of February 15 showed Truman's weakness: nationally Truman was the choice of only 36% of Democrats, compared with 21% for Kefauver. Among independent voters, however, Truman had only 18% while Kefauver led with 36%. In the
New Hampshire primary The New Hampshire presidential primary is the first in a series of nationwide party primary elections and the second party contest (the first being the Iowa caucuses) held in the United States every four years as part of the process of choosi ...
Kefauver upset Truman, winning 19,800 votes to Truman's 15,927 and capturing all eight delegates. Kefauver graciously said that he did not consider his victory "a repudiation of Administration policies, but a desire...for new ideas and personalities." Stung by this setback, Truman soon announced that he would not seek re-election (however, Truman insisted in his memoirs that he had decided not to run for re-election well before his defeat by Kefauver).


The rise of Estes Kefauver

With Truman's withdrawal, Kefauver became the front-runner for the nomination, and he won most of the primaries. Nonetheless, most states still chose their delegates at the Democratic Convention via state conventions, which meant that the party bosses - especially the mayors and governors of large Northern and Midwestern states and cities - were able to choose the Democratic nominee. These bosses (including President Truman) strongly disliked Kefauver; his investigations of organized crime had revealed connections between mafia figures and many of the big-city Democratic political organizations. The party bosses thus viewed Kefauver as a maverick who could not be trusted, and they refused to support him for the nomination. Instead, with President Truman taking the lead, they began to search for other, more acceptable, candidates. However, most of the other candidates had a major weakness. Senator Richard Russell of Georgia had much Southern support, but his support of racial segregation and opposition to civil rights for Southern blacks led Northern delegates to reject him as a racist. Truman favored U.S. diplomat
W. Averell Harriman William Averell Harriman (November 15, 1891July 26, 1986), better known as Averell Harriman, was an American Democratic politician, businessman, and diplomat. The son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman, he served as Secretary of Commerce un ...
of New York, but he had never held an elective office and was inexperienced in politics. Truman next turned to his Vice-President, Alben Barkley, but at 74 he was rejected as being too old by labor union leaders.


Stevenson

One candidate soon emerged who seemingly had few political weaknesses: Governor Adlai Stevenson II of Illinois. The grandson of former Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson, Stevenson came from a distinguished family in Illinois and was well known as a gifted orator, intellectual, and political moderate. In the spring of 1952 President Truman tried to convince Stevenson to take the presidential nomination, but Stevenson refused, stating that he wanted to run for re-election as Governor of Illinois. Yet Stevenson never completely took himself out of the race, and as the convention approached, many party bosses – as well as normally apolitical citizens – hoped that he could be "drafted" to run.


Democratic National Convention

The
1952 Democratic National Convention The 1952 Democratic National Convention was held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois from July 21 to July 26, 1952, which was the same arena the Republicans had gathered in a few weeks earlier for their national convention fro ...
was held in the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, the same venue where the Republicans had gathered two weeks earlier. The primary season had been decisively in Kefauver's favor and he had momentum coming in, but President Truman was still angry at " Cow-Fever's" defeat of him in New Hampshire, and the Tennessee Senator was unable to get enough delegate strength to win the nomination outright due to the delegate selection processes in most of the states at the time. The convention itself would prove, in retrospect, the last of its kind.


See also

*
1952 Republican Party presidential primaries From March 11 to June 3, 1952, delegates were elected to the 1952 Republican National Convention. The fight for the 1952 Republican nomination was largely between Eisenhower, who became the candidate of the party's liberal eastern establishment, ...


References

{{Harry S. Truman