In 1948, the United States held its 41st presidential election. In the course of the 1948 election, the Republican presidential candidate Dewey once had a huge advantage, and many people thought that the Democratic presidential candidate Truman was bound to lose. Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Kuomintang reactionaries, even directly provided Dewey with a large amount of campaign funds, hoping that dewey would come to power and assist the Kuomintang reactionaries and thus defeat the People's Liberation Army.
However, the final result of the 1948 US presidential election was that The Democratic Truman defeated the Republican Dewey by 303 to 189, and later generations also regarded the 1948 US presidential election as one of the upset presidential elections. Chiang Kai-shek, who had bet on the wrong treasure, was also retaliated by Truman and became one of the straws that crushed Chiang Kai-shek. So why did Dewey, who had a huge advantage, lose to Truman?
1948 was a bad year for Truman and the Democratic Party. In 1945, Roosevelt died, and the contradictions suppressed by Roosevelt intensified during Truman's three-year term. At that time, the Democratic Party was divided, and prices in the United States under Truman's administration rose and strikes continued. Many U.S. consortia and organizations also refused to fund the Democratic Party because they were dissatisfied with Truman's administration.
Compared with the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is the luck of the party. In 1946, the Republicans won the midterm elections and won a majority in Congress, further weakening Truman's governing base. American conglomerates and organizations that were dissatisfied with Roosevelt and Truman also provided large amounts of campaign funds to the Republican Party. In 1948, Dewey won the party primary and became the Republican presidential candidate.
Compared with the Republican Party, the Democratic primary is a mess. After Truman narrowly won the party primary, the progressive representative of the Democratic Party, former Vice President Wallace, and the conservative representative Thurmond quit the Democratic Party, forming the Progressive Party and the State Democratic Party and participating in the general election, respectively. This divided the Democratic party's vote base, and the situation became more and more unfavorable to Truman.
After the formal showdown between Truman and Dewey began, Dewey used the Republican Party's huge campaign funds to make the mainstream media in the United States almost all of them on his side. Major radio, television and newspapers in the United States almost every day during the election to advocate dewey will be elected, for example, the "New Yorker" magazine publicly referred to dewey in a yacht photo as "the president-elect of the United States is traveling."
However, Dewey, who had the advantage, made a serious mistake: he thought he would win and was reluctant to take risks. So Dewey basically spoke only vague slogans during the election, such as "Agriculture is important; there are many fish in the river; autonomy is freedom; the future is ahead." And Dewey was reluctant to approach lower- and middle-class (especially western) voters because he feared that there would be "people" who would murder the safety of future presidents.
Compared with Dewey, the inferior Truman was open-minded. From September to November 1948, Truman embarked on a 31,000-mile "election expedition" around the entire United States. Truman visited almost all settlements during the "election expedition," not even those with a few hundred voters. At each settlement, Truman carefully asked voters questions.
Truman's speeches were known for their vulgarity, but this much-mocked style of speech was popular among the American West and lower-middle-class voters, and Truman played tricks from time to time. For example, when Truman was canvassing for tickets one day in an agricultural town, a horse ran in a panic. Truman immediately rushed up to subdue the horses, and all the voters present applauded Truman.
Dewey, on the other hand, basically only appears in large and medium-sized cities, only caring about the so-called polls in the media. Dewey and the Republican Party, who were about to be lame by the media, also believed and openly declared that Truman's "election expedition" was "to make a big fuss at every railroad station." As a result, Dewey did not effectively counter Truman's "election expedition" and offended a large number of voters in the Midwest because of the contemptuous name of "rail station".
Due to the media's advocacy and the "information cocoon" created by the elite, Dewey and the Republican Party were completely unaware that Truman had stabilized the democratic party's basic plate with the "election expedition" and other wrists, and also won the wide support of voters in the Midwest. In early November 1948, Gallup announced the results of the last poll before the election: Truman was five percentage points behind Dewey.
However, there is a serious problem with the Gallup polls: low-income groups and farmers are not surveyed. Unfortunately, dewey, Republicans, and the pro-Dewey media didn't realize it until the official voting on the election began. The Chicago Tribune preemptively printed the "Dewey Defeats Truman" number on the day of the election vote, and the Republican bigwig congratulated Dewey in advance.
However, with the counting of votes in the general election, the "Dewey victory" expected by many people did not appear, but Truman won the electoral votes of one state after another with a clear advantage, and even some states that supported the Republican Party during the Roosevelt period were also "blue". On November 3, 1948, Truman's victory was no longer reversed, and Dewey had to send a telegram acknowledging his defeat to Truman.
On the whole, Truman beat Dewey for only one reason: he received widespread support from the grassroots. The elites and mainstream media who were out of the city did not see this, and a similar situation was repeated in 2016. The elite in the United States was still like this, and Chiang Kai-shek, who was far away in China and was an enemy of the people, naturally could not guess Truman's victory.