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Truman, Wallace and '48

Yesterday, in mulling over the Greens, I cited Studs Terkel's argument that Henry Wallace's third-party run in 1948 helped Harry Truman and the Dems win the election. Afterward I got this note from Richard Winger, who runs the Ballot Access News website.

You talked about 1948, and you were right. However, it was Samuel Lubell, pollster turned political scientist, who first made the point about 1948. And it wasn't theoretical. His polling data showed that 2,000,000 mostly Catholic, conservative Democrats had voted for Dewey in 1944, because they were so disgusted that the Communist Party in 1944 had endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt. But those 2,000,000 voters came back to the Democrats in 1948, because the Communist Party in 1948 was busy attacking Truman and boosting Progressive Party nominee Henry Wallace. So although Truman lost 1,100,000 votes that went to Wallace (that was Wallace's national total), he gained 2,000,000 votes away from Dewey, which was far more valuable to him. He couldn't have won without them. He carried California, Ohio and Illinois by the squeakiest of margins, and if Dewey had carried those states, Dewey would have had a majority in the electoral college.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 30, 2003 9:36 AM

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