Election case study

What do you do when all the signs are pointing to failure?

Harry S. Truman was a compromise Vice President who assumed the main role on the sudden death of President Theodore Roosevelt 81 days after the 1945 inauguration. In 1949 it was Truman’s turn to face the electorate and it was not looking good for the incumbent. Polls had the Republican Thomas E Dewey so far in front that some decided to cease polling as it was considered a waste of resources. The polls reflected the fact that Truman had to fight efforts from within his own party to deselect him at convention while the Democrats split over civil rights and cold war issues. At that time the theory (“Farley’s law”) was that the conventions gave a clear indication as to the success or otherwise of a candidate and commentators held to this belief until polling day. It transpired that 14% of voters made up their minds two weeks or less before they cast their vote.?

The President knew that there are things in this life that we can control and others that are outside our control. He concentrated on the former. He hit the road, or more correctly the rail as his campaign train traversed the country from coast to coast, covering 21,928 miles, and stopping at every point a crowd was gathered where he had the opportunity to meet and greet the electorate. He criss-crossed the nation in a gruelling campaign. Truman was not well educated (but very well read), not a great orator and anyone who shook his hand was aware that it was a hand that had seen its fair share of hard work mostly behind the plough.

The two campaigns can be compared to a business start up versus a mature company. The start-up (ironically Truman) had nothing to lose and came out fighting whereas Dewey’s tactic, being so far in front, was to avoid making mistakes. None of the Republicans speeches had any substance while the President’s campaign strategist, Clark Clifford, explained that their campaign had four distinct elements labour, the farmer, the negro, and the consumer. “The Republicans have nailed the consumers to the wall with spikes of greed” was typical of Truman’s “gloves off” attitude and reflected the “nothing to lose” approach of the campaign.

Dewey felt he couldn’t alienate democratic voters and seldom even mentioned his main competitor by name. “The Dewey campaign had been forced into inertia not because of it had been underthought but because it had been overthought” Jules Abels journalist. Two short films from each of the candidates were shown in cinemas, (the equivalent of social media) with Truman’s low budget production seen by analysts as portraying him more positively than the Republican’s slick production.

Articles were written in advance predicting the positions to be taken up by Republicans in Washington and the Chicago Daily Tribune carried the headline “Dewey beats Truman” on the day of the poll. The gamble of the editor and his type setters didn’t pay off as it was Truman who carried 28 states to Dewey’s 16. A Daily Express headline had similarly heralded in a Churchillian victory in the UK which was to prove a tad over-optimistic as Atlee’s Labour party had a convincing victory in 1945.

One can only imagine the all-nighters pulled by journalists who had to rewrite scripts to accommodate the unthinkable result.?????