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The 1952 Presidential Election
The 1952 United States presidential election was the 42nd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1952. Republican Douglas MacArthur won a landslide victory over Democrat incumbent Harry S. Truman, ending a string of Democratic Party wins that stretched back to 1932.

Truman, the incumbent President, emerged victorious on the presidential ballot of the 1952 Democratic National Convention, defeating Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and other candidates. The Republican nomination, meanwhile, was primarily contested by Douglas MacArthur, war hero and general who was widely popular for his leadership in the war against Japan, conservative Senator and isolationist Robert A. Taft of Ohio and moderate but somewhat unknown Senator Richard Nixon of California.

With the support of other party leaders, MacArthur narrowly prevailed over Taft and Nixon at the 1952 Republican National Convention with Thomas Dewey, himself a former presidential candidate, as his running mate. In the first televised presidential campaign, both candidates were heavily trying to influence the new medium however they could.

Republicans attacked Truman's handling of the war with the Japanese and subsequent occupation and the broader Cold War as a whole and alleged that Nazi spies had infiltrated the U.S. government at every level. Democrats faulted MacArthur as nothing more than a flip-flop candidate who changed his mind whenever convenient, and also his own handling of the war, as he was known as "Bloody Mac" due to his seeming uncaringness of the Japanese Home Island invasion and the treatment of veterans thereafter.

MacArthur, however, retained his enormous popularity from the war, as seen in his campaign slogan "I Like Mac". MacArthur's popularity and Truman's unpopularity led to a massive Republican victory, culminating in a 56.2% popular vote count, winning every state outside of the Deep South.