Spoiler alert: That isn’t what occurred. Truman gained a transparent plurality of the favored vote — a 4.5 level margin — and a cushty 303 electoral votes. No, he didn’t win New York, due to the Wallace vote and Dewey’s recognition in his house state. Sure, he misplaced 39 electoral votes in 4 Southern states to the Thurmond-Wright ticket. It didn’t matter. Truman scored slim victories in California, Illinois and Ohio, and returned to the presidency.
Put up-election analysts pointed to Truman’s combative “Give ‘em hell!” strategy and a robust exhibiting amongst Black individuals, labor and the farm vote, in addition to Dewey’s risk-averse marketing campaign and stiff-backed character. (“The little groom on the marriage cake,” as Dorothy Parker famously referred to as him.)
What was neglected — then and now — is how perilously shut the US got here to a deadlocked contest that might have rocked American democracy, shaking the general public’s confidence in our electoral system whereas giving Southern segregationists an opportunity to extort the nation.
How shut did America come to a constitutional disaster?
Take a look at two key states. In California, the place almost 4 million votes had been solid, Truman gained by about 18,000 votes giving him the state’s 25 electoral votes. In Ohio, the place almost 3 million individuals voted, Truman gained by simply 7,000 votes, giving him that state’s 25 electoral votes. If 12,000 voters in these two states had modified their minds, Truman would have wound up with 253 electoral votes, Dewey with 239 and Thurmond with 39 — with no candidate successful the required 266 electoral vote majority.
Think about the nation’s voters waking up Wednesday morning to find that they’d not elected a president. The primary possible response can be confusion: What occurs now? They’d have discovered that underneath the Byzantine guidelines laid down by the twelfth Modification, the Home of Representatives would vote not by particular person members, however by state delegations — one state, one vote. The only member from Alaska would have the identical vote because the 45-member delegation of New York. It might take a majority of delegations — 25 out of 48 — to elect a president. If a state delegation was tied, that state wouldn’t be counted, however a victorious candidate would nonetheless want 25 states. And the members must select from among the many high three electoral votes finishers: Truman, Dewey and Thurmond.
However nothing that “easy” would cowl the sheer head-scratching nature of an election and not using a majority. Within the weeks after the November vote, the highlight would first fall on the presidential electors — the true voters who select a president. And in 1948, the final perception was that members of the Electoral School had been roughly free brokers. Whereas some states had legal guidelines requiring electors to vote for the candidate underneath whose title they ran, most states didn’t; and if a rogue elector selected to defy these guidelines, it was unclear what might be completed about it. The U.S. Supreme Court docket didn’t get round to forbidding such “faithless electors” till 2020.
The possible consequence would have been makes an attempt to steer electors to change sufficient of their votes to make an electoral majority; one believable case would concentrate on making the favored vote winner the president. However what number of GOP electors can be keen to face the wrath of their celebration again house?
For instance, if Dewey, who had made clear his refusal to discount with segregationists, had been to induce his New York electors to vote for Truman, what number of of them — from conservative upstate areas of the state — would accede to that request? And what number of Truman electors from states like Georgia, Tennessee and Florida would swap their votes to Thurmond to deprive the president of an electoral majority? In truth, the important thing motive for the States’ Rights Democratic Get together to exist was to power the election into the Home, the place the South would hope to win deep concessions on civil rights from whomever emerged as president — and there have been any variety of Democratic Home members outdoors the 4 Thurmond-won states in sympathy with that effort.
If we assume that electors wouldn’t ship the presidency to Truman, a deadlocked election would transfer the competition to the Congress — with sufficient uncertainty to boggle the thoughts.
