During the 1956 Presidential Election, Dwight Eisenhower was running for re-election. Eisenhower was the Republican Candidate. Dwight D. Eisenhower was extremely admired, but had been diagnosed with health issues. These issues made people reluctant to vote for him because they did not want the President of the United States to die in office. This election was almost a carbon copy of the election of 1952 because Eisenhower was running against the same Democratic Candidate. The Democratic Candidate was Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson was also quite popular with the Democratic Party, but had never held a government job, which ended up hurting him drastically.
Eisenhower choose to have Richard Nixon be his running mate throughout the election. Estes Kefauver was selected to be the Vice President candidate for the undermatched Stevenson. Stevenson let the delegates at the Democratice Convention choose his running mate instead of choosing it himself. The two men in the hunt for the job were Kefauver and JFK.
The election of 1956 was pretty much a landslide. Eisenhower won a total of 41 states, which meant that Stevenson won a meer 7 states. This only added up to 48 states because Alaska and Hawaii were not states at this time. The electoral vote count was also a landslide. Eisenhower won 457 of the electoral votes and Stevenson won 73 of the electoral votes. Eisenhower also won the popular vote.
I thought it was very interesting to learn about the election of 1956. It was interesting that this election was almost the same as the previous election. Now a days I doubt that a Presidential Candidate would have other people select their running mate. Even though Eisenhower had health issues, I think that people voted for him because they knew that he could lead the country.
Sources_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1956 - Results
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1956
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