1952 Democratic Party presidential primaries
From March 11 to June 3, 1952, voters and members of the Democratic Party elected delegates to the 1952 Democratic National Convention, partly for the purpose of choosing a nominee for president in the 1952 United States presidential election. Incumbent President Harry S. Truman declined to campaign for re-election after losing the New Hampshire primary to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Kefauver proceeded to win a majority of the popular vote, but failed to secure a majority of delegates, most of whom were selected through other means.
The 1952 Democratic National Convention, held from July 21 to July 26, 1952, in Chicago, was forced to go multiballot.[1] The nomination went to Adlai Stevenson II, the governor of Illinois.
Democratic National Convention[edit]
The 1952 Democratic National Convention was held in the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, the same venue where the Republicans had gathered two weeks earlier. The primary season had been decisively in Kefauver's favor and he had momentum coming in, but President Truman was still angry at "Cow-Fever's" defeat of him in New Hampshire, and the Tennessee Senator was unable to get enough delegate strength to win the nomination outright due to the delegate selection processes in most of the states at the time. The convention itself would prove, in retrospect, the last of its kind.