The Election of 1952 took place during the cold war. Truman had decided not to run again, so the Democrats choose Adlai Stevenson for their presidential candidate. Stevenson was the Governor of Illinois. The Republicans choose Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was known as a National hero. Stevenson's running mate was John Sparkman and Eisenhower's running mate was Richard Nixon.
Eisenhower's campaign was one of the first to focus on winning the women's votes. Eisenhower radio and television commercials focused on education, inflation, ending the war in Korea, and topic that were seen as appealing to women. On election day Eisenhower did win majority of the women's votes. He focused on charges that Soviet spies had got into the government. His campaign also blamed the Democrats for the military being unprepared for the fight against Korea. Stevenson's campaign however didn't do so well. It focused on criticizing Senator Joseph McCarthy and GOP conservatives as "fear mongers" who were walking all over the civil liberties of government employees.
Stevenson attracted intellectuals and academics because of his speeches. Which some experts claim just went "over the heads" of the people. With Eisenhower people felt more comfortable. The results of the election were Eisenhower winning with 34,075,529 votes or 55.2% and Stevenson with 27,375,090 votes or 44.3%. Eisenhower won 39 out of the 48 states. One thing I found interesting was that this election was the first since 1928 that a Republican was elected President. Another interesting fact about this election was that it was the first in which the computer was used to predict the results.
The Election of 1956 was basically a rematch between Eisenhower and Stevenson. Stevenson fought hard by focusing on the female vote since women's vote had a large part in Eisenhower's victory. Television played a huge part in Eisenhower's campaign because he was 66 years old and not in great health, so travel was the best. Eisenhower's also supported the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, which ended legal segregation in public schools. This lead to him gaining support from 40% of the black voters. The Results of this elections were Eisenhower winning with 35,579,180 votes or 57.4% and Stevenson with 26,028,028 votes or 42%. Something that amazed me was that schools were still segregated and that Eisenhower was the last Republican to receive that much support from black voters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1956
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1952
Comments
Well done Carly!