1956 United States presidential election in New York

1956 United States presidential election in New York
	November 6, 1956
	November 6, 1956
Turnout	67.9%[1] 3.3 pp
Eisenhower 50-60% 60-70% 70-80% 80-90%	Stevenson 50-60%
President before election; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Republican	Elected President ; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Republican

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.

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
County	#	%	#	%	#	%	#	%	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
Totals	4,345,506	61.24%	2,747,944	38.73%	2,521	0.04%	1,597,562	22.51%	7,095,971

Notes

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

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

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[2] 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.

[1] Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, part 2, p. 1072.

[3] "The Presidents". David Leip. Retrieved September 27, 2017. Eisenhower's home state for the 1956 Election was Pennsylvania

[4] "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections". Uselectionatlas.org. Retrieved 2013-07-14.

[5] Emmet John Hughes, "52,000,000 TV Sets-How Many Votes?" The New York Times, September 25, 1960, SM23

[6] John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (2006) pp 129-30

[7] Counting the Votes; New York

1956 United States presidential election in New York

Results

Results by county

See also

Notes

References