The 1948 election wasn't a close one as it turned out. But it did illustrate how the polls can get it wrong, in this case, very wrong.

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The 1948 election was more of a November Surprise than an October one, but the month of October was pivotal for Harry Truman, as he refused to believe what almost everyone else in the country believed: that the election was a slam dunk for the Republicans. Instead Truman used October to fight back, and his perseverance paid off.

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Lyndon Johnson was a long time Washington politician who had served in the Senate from 1949 until his inauguration as Vice-President in January, 1961. He had been the Senate Majority Leader and was known as the "Master of the Senate" before becoming Vice-President and he became President of the United States on November 22, 1963, following the ( Read more... )

FDR's successes in addressing the Great Depression and managing the second world war led to a spirit of national unity so strong that the President was elected to four consecutive terms, a record that will never be surpassed without a constitutional amendment. He would not survive his final term, and his successor Harry Truman would not enjoy the ( Read more... )

Jack Roosevelt Robinson, better known as Jackie, was an professional baseball player who became the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era. Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball when the Brooklyn Dodgers put him in the lineup at first base on April 15, 1947. When the Dodgers signed Robinson, it was the ( Read more... )

Probably more has been written about the election of 1948 than any other. It, perhaps along with 2016, remains as the biggest surprising result in Presidential electoral history. 1948 was a year when a lot of people were upset with the political establishment, or so it seemed. Discontent seemed so bad that the incumbent Democratic Party split into ( Read more... )

FDR's successes in addressing the Great Depression and managing the second world war led to a spirit of national unity so strong that the President was elected to four consecutive terms, a record that will never be surpassed without a constitutional amendment. He would not survive his final term, and his successor Harry Truman would not enjoy the ( Read more... )

On May 27, 1911, Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr, the 38th Vice President of the United States, and the Democratic Party candidate for President in the 1968 presidential election, was born in Wallace, South Dakota in a room above his father's drug store. Like Al Smith before him, Humphrey would come to be known as "the happy warrior" and would become ( Read more... )

Jack Roosevelt Robinson, better known as Jackie, was an professional baseball player who became the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era. Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball when the Brooklyn Dodgers put him in the lineup at first base on April 15, 1947. When the Dodgers signed Robinson, it was the ( Read more... )

Lurleen Burns Wallace was the 46th governor of Alabama for fifteen months from January 1967 until her death in May 1968. She was the first wife of Alabama governor George Wallace, and she succeeded her segregationist husband as governor of the state because the Alabama constitution forbade him for holding office for consecutive terms. She was also ( Read more... )