# 1952 Presidential Election [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] (Republican), the Supreme Allied Commander of WWII, defeated Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson, the cerebral governor of Illinois. Eisenhower had been courted by both parties as early as 1948 and entered the 1952 Republican primary substantially to block Senator [[Robert Taft]] (Ohio) — the leader of the "Old Right" isolationist wing of the GOP — from winning the nomination and rolling back the postwar internationalist consensus. Eisenhower won 442 to 89 electoral votes, 55.2% to 44.3% in the popular vote, ending the 20-year Democratic run that had started with FDR in 1932. The campaign featured the famous "**Checkers speech**" by Eisenhower's running mate [[Richard Nixon]], delivered September 23, 1952 in response to a fund-raising scandal — a televised personal address that saved Nixon's place on the ticket and pioneered the use of television for direct political appeal. ## Result - **[[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]** (Republican) — 442 electoral votes, 55.2% popular - **Adlai Stevenson** (Democrat) — 89 electoral votes, 44.3% popular - Total: 531 electoral votes - Turnout: 63.3% ## Right-wing relevance The 1952 election is significant to right-wing analysis principally for what it did *not* do: it did not deliver the Republican Party to the Old Right (Taft) wing. The Eisenhower victory ratified the **internationalist, accommodationist, Modern Republican** approach to the postwar order, which the subsequent Buckley-Goldwater conservative movement was specifically constructed against. *National Review* was founded in 1955 — three years into the Eisenhower presidency — to articulate a conservatism that would not be Eisenhower's. The 1952 election is the operational beginning of the *intra-Republican* battle between the Modern Republican accommodationist tradition and the movement-conservative tradition that would not be resolved until the Reagan 1980 victory. The 1952 election also marked the beginning of [[Richard Nixon]]'s national political career as a Vice President who pioneered television-era political communication (the Checkers speech is the founding case). ## Connections - [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] — Winner; ended 20-year Democratic presidential run. - [[Richard Nixon]] — Eisenhower's VP; future president. - [[Harry S. Truman]] — Outgoing president; did not seek a second full term after losing the New Hampshire primary. ---