[citation needed] Other candidates who were known to be willing to accept the nomination or actively seeking the nomination without being placed on the ballot in a primary included former President Herbert Hoover, businessman Wendell Willkie, Pennsylvania Governor Arthur James, New Hampshire Senator Styles Bridges, and newspaper publisher Frank Gannett.

Those candidates who had actively campaigned for the nomination, especially Dewey and Vandenberg, emphasized their opposition to military involvement in Europe at a time when most Republicans opposed intervention.

Keynote speaker Harold E. Stassen, the Governor of Minnesota, announced his "tacit" support for Willkie and became his official floor manager.

The delegations were selected not by primaries but by party leaders in each state, and they had a keen sense of the fast-changing pulse of public opinion.

Gallup found the same thing in polling data not reported until after the convention: Willkie had moved ahead among Republican voters by 44% to only 29% for the collapsing Dewey.

The key moments came when the delegations of large states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York left Dewey and Vandenberg and switched to Willkie, giving him the victory on the sixth ballot.

"WILLKIE BREAKS PARTY TRADITION BY PERSONAL APPEARANCE LIKE ROOSEVELT'S IN '32", the New York Times' headline told its readers.

"CROWD GOES WILD GREETING NOMINEE" and "CHEERS MARK HIS EVERY WORD" in the New York Times' headlines convey something of the convention's mood in 1940.

"As your nominee," Willkie told the convention in his brief appearance, "I expect to conduct a crusading, vigorous, fighting campaign.

A couple of months later, Willkie again accepted the nomination in a kick-off speech at Calloway Park in his hometown of Elwood, Indiana.

He left the decision to the convention chairman, Representative Joe Martin (R-Massachusetts), the House Minority Leader.

Local newspapers predicted that two thousand people would view the convention from the museum, and estimates range as high as 6,000 total television viewers in all three cities.