Why did Adlai Stevenson do so poorly in Illinois in 1952?

[Blow by blow, the passion dies]

He literally lost Cook County, only winning a few ancestrally D counties downstate.

Probably due to Eisenhower's charisma and popularity as a war hero.

[nclib]

Amazing, as he was the incumbent Governor at the time. Quite different from Gore losing TN after 8 years as VP and before that, a Senator and Congressman, not a Governor.

[Mr. Smith]

Amazing, as he was the incumbent Governor at the time. Quite different from Gore losing TN after 8 years as VP and before that, a Senator and Congressman, not a Governor.

Harding defeated James Cox handily in Ohio despite the latter being the Governor in 1920. So this isn't new.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Amazing, as he was the incumbent Governor at the time. Quite different from Gore losing TN after 8 years as VP and before that, a Senator and Congressman, not a Governor.

Harding defeated James Cox handily in Ohio despite the latter being the Governor in 1920. So this isn't new.

Harding was also from Ohio, so it's not really a direct comparison.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Anyway, I suspect part of the answer was that Stevenson was kind of an accidental governor. He was elected only once in 1948 defeating a Republican incumbent who had a huge backlash to him over his handling of this. He honestly probably would've lost if he had ran for reelection in 1952 anyway.

[Agonized-Statism]

That's a real mystery. Illinois had been a solidly Republican state before that 1932-1948 stretch and its flip could be looked at as a return to form, but that doesn't explain the margins. Stevenson did terribly for a relatively popular incumbent governor, and a member of a distinguished Illinois political family no less. Nor did Eisenhower have some special appeal there- it was a Taft state in the Republican primaries. The statewide races were uneventful too, so no answers there.

My guess is McCarthyism-influenced backlash against the Chicago political machine. Theirs was the last big city machine left after James Farley nationalized the patronage system and immigrants rapidly became assimilated, prosperous, and no longer in need of extralegal aid in the 1940s, so it would have been a localized event. Cook County particularly was suburbanizing rapidly during that time with the availability of FHA and VA insured loans, the construction of thousands of single-family houses in Skokie and Oak Lawn, new expressways, and the move of many businesses to suburban locations. Also worth noting toward this theory is that Kefauver won the nearby Minnesota primary in 1956 by portraying Stevenson as a captive of corrupt Chicago political bosses.

[TDAS04]

He did even worse in 1956, and the state even trended right.

Also, Stevenson 1956 was the last Democratic presidential candidate to lose the city of Chicago (McGovern carried Chicago proper while losing Cook County, as did Stevenson 1952).

[wnwnwn]

It was his best Midwest state, even voting to the left of Minnesota.
Adlai was a bad fit for southern and central Illinois.
Ike was very appealing to the urban and suburban middle class.

[Vosem]

Anyway, I suspect part of the answer was that Stevenson was kind of an accidental governor. He was elected only once in 1948 defeating a Republican incumbent who had a huge backlash to him over his handling of this. He honestly probably would've lost if he had ran for reelection in 1952 anyway.

Stevenson was a national favorite of, like, educated liberals, who by this point had absolutely seized the Democratic nomination process (JFK, who was good at pandering to these people, would appoint Stevenson as UN Ambassador, which was an excellent pander), but he was indeed not necessarily very popular with the voters. The 1950s were arguably the first decade in which "educated liberals" were a real faction of the electorate -- complaints about the liberal culture of universities go much earlier (back to the 1910s), but my understanding is that there wasn't actually a bloc of voters like this until after the Second World War.

Funny to consider how the DNC making nomination decisions would go nowadays. We would absolutely have gotten Mayor Pete as the candidate in 2020.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Anyway, I suspect part of the answer was that Stevenson was kind of an accidental governor. He was elected only once in 1948 defeating a Republican incumbent who had a huge backlash to him over his handling of this. He honestly probably would've lost if he had ran for reelection in 1952 anyway.

Stevenson was a national favorite of, like, educated liberals, who by this point had absolutely seized the Democratic nomination process (JFK, who was good at pandering to these people, would appoint Stevenson as UN Ambassador, which was an excellent pander), but he was indeed not necessarily very popular with the voters. The 1950s were arguably the first decade in which "educated liberals" were a real faction of the electorate -- complaints about the liberal culture of universities go much earlier (back to the 1910s), but my understanding is that there wasn't actually a bloc of voters like this until after the Second World War.

Funny to consider how the DNC making nomination decisions would go nowadays. We would absolutely have gotten Mayor Pete as the candidate in 2020.

Yeah I think this kind of boils down to a fact that Stevenson was quite frankly a lousy candidate. People don't think of him as such nowadays and he's generally well regarded and respected even by Republicans because there's not really any real reason to hate him. He didn't do anything particularly controversial as governor, he had no scandals, and he was on the "right side of history" on the noted issues of the time including civil rights (although having a segregationist as his running mate in 1952 is a blemish but not one particularly known), but that doesn't make him a good candidate. Walter Mondale and even Michael Dukakis are starting to be seen similar to him too.

The fact that the Democrats nominated a weak candidate both times is no surprise, once Ike announced as a Republican 1952 was basically locked up (and probably would've been anyway with Truman's unpopularity), and in 1956 Ike was so popular and unbeatable no one else wanted to run so he just got stuck running again. But it's still a fact. Stevenson was a good guy, but a very weak candidate.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

That's a real mystery. Illinois had been a solidly Republican state before that 1932-1948 stretch and its flip could be looked at as a return to form, but that doesn't explain the margins. Stevenson did terribly for a relatively popular incumbent governor, and a member of a distinguished Illinois political family no less. Nor did Eisenhower have some special appeal there- it was a Taft state in the Republican primaries. The statewide races were uneventful too, so no answers there.

My guess is McCarthyism-influenced backlash against the Chicago political machine. Theirs was the last big city machine left after James Farley nationalized the patronage system and immigrants rapidly became assimilated, prosperous, and no longer in need of extralegal aid in the 1940s, so it would have been a localized event. Cook County particularly was suburbanizing rapidly during that time with the availability of FHA and VA insured loans, the construction of thousands of single-family houses in Skokie and Oak Lawn, new expressways, and the move of many businesses to suburban locations. Also worth noting toward this theory is that Kefauver won the nearby Minnesota primary in 1956 by portraying Stevenson as a captive of corrupt Chicago political bosses.

I also think that Eisenhower probably did respectively even among nominally working class
Democrats in Chicago who would have voted D down ballot because while they may have liked Stevenson at the gubernatorial level wanted change after twenty years of Democratic rule in the White House. Stevenson also underperformed among black voters nationally because his runningmate was a known segregationist and I imagine this had a particular impact in Chicago.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

One thing odd about Stevenson's performance in 1956 is he actually won Missouri a neighboring state while losing his home state of Illinois by 19 points, and also losing Louisiana, Eisenhower was the first Republican to win it since Reconstruction. Now with context this is explainable, Missouri had a farm crisis going on that was exacerbated by Eisenhower ending some New Deal farm subsidy programs, and I asked about Louisiana here, but Missouri definitely stands out on that map.

[Republican Party Stalwart]

That's a real mystery. Illinois had been a solidly Republican state before that 1932-1948 stretch and its flip could be looked at as a return to form, but that doesn't explain the margins. Stevenson did terribly for a relatively popular incumbent governor, and a member of a distinguished Illinois political family no less. Nor did Eisenhower have some special appeal there- it was a Taft state in the Republican primaries. The statewide races were uneventful too, so no answers there.

My guess is McCarthyism-influenced backlash against the Chicago political machine. Theirs was the last big city machine left after James Farley nationalized the patronage system and immigrants rapidly became assimilated, prosperous, and no longer in need of extralegal aid in the 1940s, so it would have been a localized event. Cook County particularly was suburbanizing rapidly during that time with the availability of FHA and VA insured loans, the construction of thousands of single-family houses in Skokie and Oak Lawn, new expressways, and the move of many businesses to suburban locations. Also worth noting toward this theory is that Kefauver won the nearby Minnesota primary in 1956 by portraying Stevenson as a captive of corrupt Chicago political bosses.

Going slightly off-topic here, but Illinois wasn't that Republican-leaning before 1932. Illinois was really a swing-state, if Republican leaning, during the Third Party System (1854-1896); it was one of the closest of the states where Lincoln won a majority (closer than Indiana, actually) in 1860, the state voted for Grover Cleveland in 1892, and John Peter Altgeld was notably elected governor during this period. During the Fourth Party System (Progressive Era/"System of 1896") Illinois was like New York State in that it alternated between being a Republican-leaning swing state and being just Republican enough not to be considered a swing state, but the instances in which Illinois was Republican enough to be considered safe R were often the result of Republican candidates being artificially boosted by Republican Chicagoland political machinery outcompeting and out-doing the Chicago Democratic machinery (helped by Catholic Church leaders denouncing the populist wing of the Dems and by Polish Catholics voting Republican as a reaction against rival Irish Catholic Democrat bloc voting) as well as boosted by the Socialist party(/ies) being disproportionately popular in urban Chicago relative to the nation at large and acting as a "spoiler" against the Democrats in Illinois (usually never enough to cause a Republican victory that wouldn't have happened anyway, but often enough to increase the GOP candidate's margin on paper by five or more points).