1956 United States presidential election in New York

The 1956 United States presidential election in New York took place on November 6, 1956. All contemporary 48 states were part of the 1956 United States presidential election. Voters chose 45 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.

1956 United States presidential election in New York

November 6, 1956
Turnout67.9%[1] 3.3 pp
 
Nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower Adlai Stevenson
Party Republican Democratic
Alliance Liberal
Home state Pennsylvania[lower-alpha 1][2] Illinois
Running mate Richard Nixon Estes Kefauver
Electoral vote 45 0
Popular vote 4,345,506 2,747,944
Percentage 61.24% 38.73%

County Results

President before election

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Republican

Elected President

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Republican

New York was won by incumbent Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was running against former Democratic Governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower ran with incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, and Stevenson ran with Tennessee Senator, and principal opponent during the 1956 Democratic Primaries, Estes Kefauver.

Eisenhower received 61.24% of the vote to Stevenson's 38.73%, a margin of 22.51%. Eisenhower won 4.3 million votes, the most ever received by a Republican presidential candidate in the state's history.

New York weighed in for this election as eight percentage points more Republican than the national average. This election was very much of a re-match from the previous presidential election 4 years earlier, which featured the same major candidates except for John Sparkman being replaced as Stevenson’s running mate by Kefauver.

The presidential election of 1956 was a very partisan election for New York, with 99.8% of the electorate voting for either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.[3] The widely popular Eisenhower took every county in the State of New York outside of New York City, dominating upstate by landslide margins and also sweeping suburban areas around NYC. Stevenson narrowly won New York City overall by carrying the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, while Eisenhower won Queens and Staten Island.

Eisenhower won the election in New York by a 22-point landslide. The presidential election of 1956 is one of the final elections in American politics featuring a Democratic stronghold in the former slave states. This was also one of the first elections in New York (and nationally) where most campaign finance went to television ads.[4] Stevenson campaigned on a platform of expansion of government social programs founded under former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, scaling back the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and ending the U.S. draft, seeking an 'all volunteer armed forces.' [5] While Stevenson's policies were largely popular with many people living in the United States at the time, Eisenhower's post World War II star-power and strong stance against peace-talks with the Soviet Union, won him a landslide victory across the United States, including in New York.

Eisenhower had first won election to the White House in 1952 as a war hero, a political outsider, and a moderate Republican who pledged to protect and support popular New Deal Democratic policies, finally ending 20 years of Democratic control of the White House. Once in office, Eisenhower governed as a moderate progressive, approving infrastructure spending projects like the Interstate Highway System and supporting high tax rates on the rich, as well as taking a progressive stand on issues related to the Civil Rights Movement. Thus Eisenhower was able to win over many more normally Democratic-leaning liberal and moderate voters in the Northeast than he already had in 1952, and thus every Northeastern state swung in his favor in 1956, including New York.

1956 was the last election in which a Republican presidential candidate took more than sixty percent of the vote in New York State and won the state by more than twenty points against his Democratic opponent, as well as the last election in which New York State was more Republican than the national average.[6]

Results

1956 United States presidential election in New York
Party Candidate Votes Percentage Electoral votes
Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower 4,345,506 61.24% 45
Democratic Adlai Stevenson 2,455,457 34.60%
Liberal Adlai Stevenson 292,487 4.12%
Total Adlai Stevenson 2,747,944 38.73% 0
Write-ins 2,521 0.02% 0
Totals 7,095,971 100.0% 45

Results by county

County Dwight David Eisenhower
Republican
Adlai Stevenson II
Democratic/Liberal
Various candidates
Write-ins
Margin Total votes cast
# % # % # % # %
Albany 86,202 56.64% 65,982 43.35% 9 0.01% 20,220 13.29% 152,193
Allegany 16,068 81.41% 3,668 18.59% 12,400 62.83% 19,736
Bronx 257,382 42.78% 343,823 57.15% 383 0.06% -86,441 -14.37% 601,588
Broome 67,024 74.27% 23,217 25.73% 43,807 48.54% 90,241
Cattaraugus 25,282 72.45% 9,613 27.55% 15,669 44.90% 34,895
Cayuga 26,503 72.07% 10,268 27.92% 4 0.01% 16,235 44.15% 36,775
Chautauqua 44,149 68.52% 20,269 31.46% 14 0.02% 23,880 37.06% 64,432
Chemung 33,270 74.16% 11,592 25.84% 21,678 48.32% 44,862
Chenango 16,314 81.09% 3,804 18.91% 12,510 62.18% 20,118
Clinton 16,295 70.45% 6,833 29.54% 2 0.01% 9,462 40.91% 23,130
Columbia 19,004 79.17% 4,999 20.83% 14,005 58.35% 24,003
Cortland 14,085 79.59% 3,612 20.41% 10,473 59.18% 17,697
Delaware 17,364 81.91% 3,835 18.09% 13,529 63.82% 21,199
Dutchess 53,840 78.34% 14,876 21.65% 8 0.01% 38,964 56.70% 68,724
Erie 292,657 63.67% 166,930 36.32% 62 0.01% 125,727 27.35% 459,649
Essex 13,930 82.11% 3,035 17.89% 10,895 64.22% 16,965
Franklin 13,003 71.33% 5,226 28.67% 7,777 42.66% 18,229
Fulton 18,244 74.17% 6,352 25.83% 11,892 48.35% 24,596
Genesee 17,614 74.64% 5,986 25.36% 11,628 49.27% 23,600
Greene 14,262 78.91% 3,811 21.09% 10,451 57.83% 18,073
Hamilton 2,619 84.78% 470 15.22% 2,149 69.57% 3,089
Herkimer 22,246 71.68% 8,789 28.32% 13,457 43.36% 31,035
Jefferson 28,429 74.06% 9,959 25.94% 1 0.00% 18,470 48.11% 38,389
Kings 460,456 45.21% 557,655 54.75% 368 0.04% -97,199 -9.54% 1,018,479
Lewis 7,764 75.38% 2,536 24.62% 5,228 50.76% 10,300
Livingston 15,523 75.67% 4,989 24.32% 1 0.00% 10,534 51.35% 20,513
Madison 18,555 79.09% 4,903 20.90% 4 0.02% 13,652 58.19% 23,462
Monroe 183,747 66.83% 91,161 33.16% 23 0.01% 92,586 33.68% 274,931
Montgomery 20,678 67.39% 9,996 32.58% 11 0.04% 10,682 34.81% 30,685
Nassau 372,358 69.02% 166,646 30.89% 459 0.09% 205,712 38.13% 539,463
New York 300,004 44.23% 377,856 55.70% 457 0.07% -77,852 -11.48% 678,317
Niagara 62,433 67.43% 30,161 32.57% 32,272 34.85% 92,594
Oneida 80,178 69.83% 34,649 30.17% 45,529 39.65% 114,827
Onondaga 137,852 73.42% 49,918 26.58% 87,934 46.83% 187,770
Ontario 22,317 74.29% 7,719 25.69% 5 0.02% 14,598 48.59% 30,041
Orange 57,739 77.51% 16,722 22.45% 29 0.04% 41,017 55.06% 74,490
Orleans 11,895 77.45% 3,464 22.55% 8,431 54.89% 15,359
Oswego 29,277 76.87% 8,809 23.13% 20,468 53.74% 38,086
Otsego 19,484 77.54% 5,644 22.46% 13,840 55.08% 25,128
Putnam 12,898 73.26% 4,694 26.66% 13 0.07% 8,204 46.60% 17,605
Queens 471,223 59.86% 315,898 40.13% 144 0.02% 147,334 18.77% 787,265
Rensselaer 55,186 72.90% 20,516 27.10% 34,670 45.80% 75,702
Richmond 64,233 76.53% 19,644 23.40% 59 0.07% 44,589 53.12% 83,936
Rockland 34,049 71.02% 13,881 28.95% 10 0.02% 20,168 42.07% 47,940
Saratoga 32,522 77.68% 9,338 22.30% 6 0.01% 23,184 55.38% 41,866
Schenectady 58,540 72.96% 21,673 27.01% 22 0.03% 36,867 45.95% 80,235
Schoharie 8,851 73.28% 3,227 26.72% 5,624 46.56% 12,078
Schuyler 5,795 78.23% 1,613 21.77% 4,182 56.45% 7,408
Seneca 10,417 74.20% 3,623 25.80% 6,794 48.39% 14,040
St. Lawrence 31,897 74.54% 10,892 25.46% 21,005 49.09% 42,789
Steuben 33,902 78.22% 9,440 21.78% 24,462 56.44% 43,342
Suffolk 167,805 77.60% 48,323 22.35% 104 0.05% 119,482 55.26% 216,232
Sullivan 15,845 63.94% 8,937 36.06% 6,908 27.88% 24,782
Tioga 11,958 78.94% 3,188 21.04% 3 0.02% 8,770 57.89% 15,149
Tompkins 19,749 78.29% 5,475 21.71% 14,274 56.59% 25,224
Ulster 43,034 76.36% 13,321 23.64% 5 0.01% 29,713 52.72% 56,360
Warren 17,852 82.08% 3,897 17.92% 13,955 64.16% 21,749
Washington 18,449 79.30% 4,817 20.70% 13,632 58.59% 23,266
Wayne 22,940 79.51% 5,910 20.49% 17,030 59.03% 28,850
Westchester 271,906 72.11% 104,857 27.81% 315 0.08% 167,049 44.30% 377,078
Wyoming 12,499 78.63% 3,397 21.37% 9,102 57.26% 15,896
Yates 7,910 83.12% 1,606 16.88% 6,304 66.25% 9,516
Totals4,345,50661.24%2,747,94438.73%2,5210.04%1,597,56222.51%7,095,971

See also

Notes

  1. Although he was born in Texas and grew up in Kansas before his military career, at the time of the 1952 election Eisenhower was president of Columbia University and was, officially, a resident of New York. During his first term as president, he moved his private residence to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and officially changed his residency to Pennsylvania.

References

  1. Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, part 2, p. 1072.
  2. "The Presidents". David Leip. Retrieved September 27, 2017. Eisenhower's home state for the 1956 Election was Pennsylvania
  3. "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections". Uselectionatlas.org. Retrieved 2013-07-14.
  4. Emmet John Hughes, "52,000,000 TV Sets-How Many Votes?" The New York Times, September 25, 1960, SM23
  5. John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (2006) pp 129-30
  6. Counting the Votes; New York
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