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| Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Eisenhower/Nixon, Blue denotes those won by Stevenson/Kefauver. Orange is the electoral vote for Walter Burgwyn Jones by an Alabama faithless elector. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The United States presidential election of 1956 saw a popular Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully run for re-election. The 1956 election was a rematch of 1952, as Eisenhower's opponent in 1956 was Democrat Adlai Stevenson, whom Eisenhower had defeated four years earlier.
Incumbent President Eisenhower was popular, but had health conditions that became a quiet issue. Stevenson remained popular with a core of liberal Democrats but held no office and had no real base. He (and Eisenhower) largely ignored the civil rights issue. Eisenhower had ended the Korean War and the nation was prosperous, so a landslide for the charismatic Eisenhower was never in doubt.
This was the last presidential election prior to the statehood of Alaska and Hawaii, who would first take part as states in the 1960 presidential election. It was also the last election where either one of the major candidates was born in the 19th century.
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Republican candidates
As 1956 began there was some speculation that Eisenhower would not run for a second term, primarily due to concerns about his health. In 1955 Eisenhower had suffered a serious heart attack, and in early 1956 he underwent surgery for ileitis. However, he quickly recovered after both incidents, and after being cleared by his doctors he decided to run for a second term. Given "Ike's" enormous popularity, he was renominated with no opposition at the 1956 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, California.
The only question among Republicans was whether Vice President Richard Nixon would once again be Eisenhower's running mate. There is some evidence that Eisenhower would have preferred another, less-partisan and controversial running mate, such as Governor Christian Herter of Massachusetts, and according to some historians (such as Stephen E. Ambrose), Eisenhower privately offered Nixon another position in his cabinet, such as Secretary of Defense. However, Harold Stassen was the only Republican to publicly oppose Nixon's renomination for Vice-President, and Nixon remained highly popular among the GOP's rank-and-file voters. Nixon had also reshaped the vice-presidency, using it as a platform to campaign for Republican state and local candidates across the country, and these candidates came to his defense. In the spring of 1956 Eisenhower publicly announced that Nixon would again be his running mate, and Stassen was forced to second Nixon's nomination at the Republican Convention. Unlike 1952, conservative Republicans (who had supported Robert Taft against Eisenhower in 1952) did not attempt to shape the platform. The only thing notable about the Republican Convention was that one delegate voted for a fictitious "Joe Smith" for Vice President in order to protest everything being unanimous.
Democratic candidates
Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Party's 1952 nominee, fought a tight primary battle with populist Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver for the 1956 nomination. Kefauver won the New Hampshire primary unopposed (though Stevenson won 15% on write-ins). After Kefauver upset Stevenson in the Minnesota primary, Stevenson, realizing that he was in trouble, agreed to debate Kefauver in Florida. Stevenson and Kefauver held the first televised presidential debate on May 21, 1956 before the Florida primary. Stevenson carried Florida by a 52-48% margin. By the California primary in June 1956 Kefauver's campaign had run low on money and could not compete for publicity and advertising with the well-funded Stevenson. Stevenson won the California primary by a 63-37% margin, and Kefauver soon thereafter withdrew from the race.
At the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, who was backed by former President Harry S. Truman, challenged Stevenson for the nomination. However, Stevenson's delegate lead was much too large for Harriman to overcome, and Stevenson won the nomination on the first ballot.
The roll call, as reported in Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris, Convention Decisions and Voting Records, pp. 294–298:
| Presidential Balloting, DNC 1956 | |
|---|---|
| Contender | Vote |
| Adlai Stevenson | 905.5 |
| W. Averell Harriman | 210 |
| Lyndon B. Johnson | 80 |
| Stuart Symington | 45.5 |
| Happy Chandler | 36.5 |
| James C. Davis | 33 |
| John S. Battle | 32.5 |
| George Bell Timmerman, Jr. | 23.5 |
| Frank Lausche | 5.5 |
Democratic candidates:
The highlight of the 1956 Democratic Convention came when Stevenson, in an effort to create excitement for the ticket, made the surprise announcement that the convention's delegates would choose his running mate. This set off a desperate scramble among several candidates to win the nomination; a good deal of the excitement of the vice presidential race came from the fact that the candidates had only one hectic day to campaign among the delegates before the voting began. The two leading contenders were Senator Kefauver, who retained the support of his primary delegates, and young Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who was relatively unknown at that point. Although Stevenson privately preferred Senator Kennedy to be his running mate, he did not attempt to influence the balloting for Kennedy in any way. Kennedy surprised the experts by surging into the lead on the second ballot; at one point he was only 15 votes shy of winning. However, a number of states then left their "favorite son" candidates and switched to Kefauver, giving him the victory. Kennedy then gave a gracious concession speech. The defeat was actually a boost for Kennedy's long-term presidential chances; by coming so close to defeating Kefauver he gained much favorable national publicity, yet by losing to Kefauver he avoided any blame for Stevenson's expected loss to Eisenhower in November. The vote totals in the vice presidential balloting are recorded in the following table, which also comes from Bain & Parris.
| Vice Presidential Balloting, DNC 1956 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ballot | 1 | 2 before shifts | 2 after shifts |
| Estes Kefauver | 466.5 | 551.5 | 755.5 |
| John F. Kennedy | 294.5 | 618 | 589 |
| Albert Gore, Sr. | 178 | 110.5 | 13.5 |
| Robert F. Wagner, Jr. | 162.5 | 9.5 | 6 |
| Hubert Humphrey | 134 | 74.5 | 2 |
| Luther H. Hodges | 40 | 0.5 | 0 |
| P.T. Maner | 33 | 0 | 0 |
| LeRoy Collins | 29 | 0 | 0 |
| Clinton Presba Anderson | 16 | 0 | 0 |
| Frank G. Clement | 14 | 0 | 0 |
| Pat Brown | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Lyndon B. Johnson | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Stuart Symington | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Stevenson campaigned hard against Eisenhower, with television ads for the first time being the dominant medium for both sides. Because Eisenhower's 1952 election victory was due, in large part, to winning the female vote, there were a plethora of "housewife" focused ads.
Stevenson proposed significant increases in government spending for social programs and treaties with the Soviet Union to lower military spending and end nuclear testing on both sides. He also proposed to end the military draft and switch to an "all-volunteer" military. Eisenhower publicly opposed these ideas, even though in private he was working on a proposal to ban atmospheric nuclear testing. Eisenhower had retained the enormous personal and political popularity he had earned during World War II, and he maintained a comfortable lead in the polls throughout the campaign.
Eisenhower was also helped by his handling of two developing foreign-policy crises that occurred in the weeks before the election. In the Soviet-occupied People's Republic of Hungary, many citizens had risen in revolt against Soviet domination, but this quieted with the formation of a new government. Then in Egypt, a combined force of Israeli, British, and French troops invaded to topple Gamal Abdel Nasser and seize the recently-nationalized Suez Canal. While resolving the latter crisis rapidly moved to the United Nations, Eisenhower's actions were limited,[2] and the Hungarian revolt was brutally crushed within a few days by re-deployed Soviet troops. Eisenhower condemned both actions, but was able only to pressure the western forces to withdraw from Egypt. While these two events led many Americans to rally in support of the President and swelling his expected margin of victory, the campaign had been seen differently by some foreign governments.[3] The Eisenhower administration had also supported the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954; this ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court ended legal segregation in public schools. As a result, Eisenhower won the support of nearly 40% of black voters; he was the last Republican presidential candidate to receive such a level of support from black voters.
On election day Eisenhower took over 57% of the popular vote and won 41 of the 48 states. Stevenson won only six Southern states and the border state of Missouri, becoming the first losing candidate since 1900 (William Jennings Bryan vs. McKinley) to carry the Show-Me-State. Eisenhower carried Louisiana, making him the first Republican presidential candidate to carry the state since Reconstruction in 1876.
| Presidential candidate | Party | Home state | Popular vote | Electoral vote |
Running mate | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Pct | Vice-presidential candidate | Home state | Elect. vote | ||||
| Dwight D. Eisenhower | Republican | Pennsylvania | 35,579,180 | 57.4% | 457 | Richard Nixon | California | 457 |
| Adlai Stevenson | Democratic | Illinois | 26,028,028 | 42.0% | 73 | Estes Kefauver | Tennessee | 73 |
| (Unpledged electors) | (n/a) | (n/a) | 196,145 | 0.3% | 0 | (n/a) | (n/a) | 0 |
| T. Coleman Andrews | States' Rights | Virginia | 107,929 | 0.2% | 0 | Thomas Werdel | California | 0 |
| Walter Burgwyn Jones | Democratic | Alabama | —(a) | —(a) | 1 | Herman Talmadge | Georgia | 1 |
| Other | 110,046 | 0.2% | — | Other | — | |||
| Total | 62,021,328 | 100% | 531 | 531 | ||||
| Needed to win | 266 | 266 | ||||||
Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1956 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (August 1, 2005).Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (August 1, 2005).
(a) Alabama faithless elector W. F. Turner, who was pledged to Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver, instead cast his votes for Walter Burgwyn Jones, who was a circuit court judge in Turner's home town, and Herman Talmadge, governor of the neighboring state of Georgia.
Because of the admission of Alaska and Hawaii as states in 1959, the 1956 presidential election was the last in which there were 531 electoral votes.
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