The convention's civil rights plank caused a walkout by several Southern delegates, who launched a third-party "Dixiecrat" ticket led by South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond.

The Dixiecrats hoped to win enough electoral votes to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives, where they could extract concessions from either Dewey or Truman in exchange for their support.

[5] Truman's feisty campaign style energized his base of traditional Democrats, consisting of most of the white South, as well as labor unions, and Catholic and Jewish voters; he also fared surprisingly well with Midwestern farmers.

His candidacy collapsed when the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and the Congress of Industrial Organizations withheld their support, partly due to concerns over Pepper's attacks on Truman's foreign policy decisions regarding the Soviet Union.

[16] It also received strong support from many of the big-city party bosses, most of whom felt that the civil rights platform would encourage the growing black population in their cities to vote for the Democrats.

[17] The passage of the civil rights platform caused some three dozen Southern delegates, led by South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, to walk out of the convention.

[18] Truman gave a fighting acceptance speech, he stated that "Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make the Republicans like it – don't you forget it!...

By January 23, 1948, the grassroots movement had successfully entered Eisenhower's name into every state holding a Republican presidential primary, and polls gave him a significant lead against all other contenders.

After a number of failed efforts to get Eisenhower to reconsider, the organization disbanded, with the majority of its leadership endorsing the presidential campaign of the former Governor of Minnesota, Harold Stassen.

Taft called for abolishing many New Deal welfare programs, which he felt were harmful to business interests, and he was skeptical of American involvement in foreign alliances such as the United Nations.

Stassen, despite his liberal reputation, argued in favor of outlawing the party, stating his belief that a network of Soviet-directed Communist spies "within the U.S. demanded immediate, and punitive, response...Why did Dewey oppose such a ban?

"[29] Dewey ended his turn in the debate by stating that "I am unalterably, wholeheartedly, and unswervingly against any scheme to write laws outlawing people because of their religious, political, social, or economic ideas.

When Stassen refused, Taft wrote a concession statement and had it read to the convention at the start of the third ballot; at this point the other candidates also dropped out, and Dewey was then nominated unanimously by acclamation.

[37] Dewey's campaign team originally wanted Illinois Governor Dwight Green to be his running mate, but the opposition of Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the powerful publisher of the Chicago Tribune, nixed his chances.

They also campaigned to end discrimination against blacks and women, backed a minimum wage, and called for the elimination of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating the possibility of communist spies within the government and labor unions.

"[41] Walter Reuther, the president of the influential United Auto Workers union, strongly opposed Wallace's candidacy, stating that "people who are not sympathetic with democracy in America are influencing him.

In his book Out of the Jaws of Victory, the journalist Jules Abels wrote: "Personalities were referred to by symbolic titles—Roosevelt was 'The Flaming One', Churchill 'The Roaring Lion', and Cordell Hull 'The Sour One'... some of the letters were signed 'Wallace', others 'Galahad'", the name that Roerich had assigned Wallace in his cult.

"[53] Wallace himself attacked Winston Churchill as a "racist" and "imperialist", and Senator Taylor earned criticism for a speech in which he claimed that the "Nazis are running the U.S. government.

On May 10, 1948, the governors of the eleven states of the former Confederacy, along with other high-ranking Southern officials, met in Jackson, Mississippi, to discuss their concerns about the growing civil rights movement within the Democratic Party.

[63][64] Given Truman's sinking popularity and the seemingly fatal three-way split in the Democratic Party, Dewey appeared unbeatable to the point where top Republicans believed that all their candidate had to do to win was to avoid major mistakes.

An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal summed it up: No presidential candidate in the future will be so inept that four of his major speeches can be boiled down to these historic four sentences: Agriculture is important.

Under Dewey's leadership, the Republicans had enacted a platform at their 1948 convention that called for expanding Social Security, more funding for public housing, civil rights legislation, and promotion of health and education by the federal government.

Truman simply ignored the fact that Dewey's policies were considerably more liberal than most of his fellow Republicans, and instead concentrated his fire against what he characterized as the conservative, obstructionist tendencies of the unpopular 80th Congress.

The Dewey film, shot professionally on an impressive budget, featured very high production values but somehow reinforced an image of the New York governor as cautious and distant.

Alistair Cooke, the distinguished writer for the Manchester Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, published an article on the day of the election entitled "Harry S. Truman: A Study of a Failure.

[92] As Truman made his way to his hometown of Independence, Missouri, to await the election returns, some among his inner circle had already accepted other jobs, and not a single reporter traveling on his campaign train thought that he would win,[90] while a number of prominent Republicans, anticipating serving in a Dewey administration, had already bought homes in Washington.

"[88] James Farley, President Franklin Roosevelt's successful campaign manager in 1932 and 1936, had stated that, in his opinion, the great majority of voters decided which candidate to support during the political conventions.

[88] In 1948 many pollsters, relying on Farley's Law, believed that the election was effectively over after the Republican and Democratic conventions, and they discounted the impact of Truman's campaigning that fall.

[101] Journalist Samuel Lubell found in his post-1948 survey of voters that Truman, not Dewey, seemed the safer, more conservative candidate to the "new middle class" that had developed over the previous 20 years.

The Dixiecrats also failed to draw off enough Truman voters to throw any of his states to Dewey, with the nearest they came in this regard being in Virginia, where the 25.0% margin won by Roosevelt in 1944 was reduced to 6.9% this time.