1956 United States presidential election

43rd quadrennial U.S. presidential election

The 1956 United States presidential election happened on November 6, 1956. President Dwight D. Eisenhower won reelection to a second term. He defeated former Governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson in a rematch of the 1952 presidential election.

1956 United States presidential election

← 1952 November 6, 1956 1960 →

531 members of the Electoral College
266 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout60.6%[1] Decrease 2.7 pp
 
Nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower Adlai Stevenson
Party Republican Democratic
Home state Pennsylvania[2] Illinois
Running mate Richard Nixon Estes Kefauver
Electoral vote 457 73
States carried 41 7
Popular vote 35,579,180 26,028,028
Percentage 57.4% 42.0%

Presidential election results map. Red denotes those won by Eisenhower/Nixon, Blue denotes states won by Stevenson/Kefauver. Orange denotes won by Walter Burgwyn Jones by an Alabama faithless elector. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.

President before election

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Republican

Elected President

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Republican

Incumbent president Dwight D. Eisenhower won the election by 457 electoral votes. Adlai Stevenson got 73 electoral votes. Walter Burgwyn Jones got one vote by a faithless elector in Alabama.

This was the last election in which Alaska and Hawaii were not states.[3]

Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in September 1955 while in Colorado for a vacation. His doctors told him not to run for another election. However, Eisenhower announced his candidacy for re-election on television in early 1956.

References

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  1. "Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections". The American Presidency Project. UC Santa Barbara.
  2. "1956 Electoral College Results". National Archives. Retrieved February 15, 2021.
  3. "1956 Presidential Election". 270 To Win. Retrieved December 15, 2012.

Other websites

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  Media related to United States presidential election, 1956 at Wikimedia Commons