The election saw Democrat Martin H. Kennelly being reelected for a second term, defeating Republican Robert L. Hunter by a double-digit margin.

This would save the city money, as in certain wards in which aldermanic nominations for a party were uncontested they would be able run the elections with a reduced number of polling places and ballot papers required.

[7] The Cook County Republican Party organization thereafter gave their endorsement to Hunter,[7] who resigned from his seat on the Illinois Civil Service Commission in order to run for mayor.

[8] After Walter E. Pancanowski's candidacy petition was rejected, Hunter was left the only candidate seeking the party's nomination and won it by default.

[10] The Tribune, and therefore Hunter, blamed the local Democratic Party for having helped President Harry S. Truman win reelection.

[10] They therefore litigated what they regarded to have been Truman's misdeeds as presidents, including extending New Deal policies and entering the nation into the Korean War.

[10] Illinois' Democratic Governor Adlai Stevenson II derided the Republicans' national-politics focused approach to a local election as, "a political absurdity".

[9] Contributing to voter apathy may have been findings by the United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce that shined a negative light on the underworld of Chicago politics.

[9] However, Hunter also failed to demonstrate to voters ability on his part to solve the crime issue in the city, and refused to take any strong stance against elements of the Republican party that were allied with gangsters[9] Kennelly had, by 1951, seen a loss of support among African American electorate that had strongly supported him four years earlier.