1956 U.S. presidential election

1956

President Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson again by a wider margin, during the Suez and Hungary crises.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First atomic nuclei form → First stars ignite → First galaxies assemble → Milky Way takes shape → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Ediacaran biota → Cloudina, first shells and first predators → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Lobe-finned fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → Synapsids, the mammal line, split from reptiles → Therapsids, ancestors of mammals → Cynodonts, the ancestors of mammals → First mammals → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → First anthropoid primates → Apes split from monkeys → Great apes split from gibbons → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Egyptian hieroglyphs → The alphabet → Phoenician alphabet → Greek alphabet → Solon's reforms → Athenian democracy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Death of Alexander and the Hellenistic kingdoms → Seleucid Empire founded → Parthian Empire founded → Sasanian Empire → Birth of Muhammad → Muhammad's first revelations → The Hijra → Conquest of Mecca → Death of Muhammad and the Rashidun caliphate → Arab conquests → Abbasid Caliphate → Battle of Talas → Paper reaches the Islamic world → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → Stamp Act → Boston Tea Party → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → Articles of Confederation ratified → Shays' Rebellion → U.S. Constitution → Louisiana Purchase → Austin's colony in Mexican Texas → Texas Revolution → United States annexes Texas → Mexican-American War → Compromise of 1850 → Kansas-Nebraska Act → Lincoln elected president → Fort Sumter → U.S. Civil War → Emancipation Proclamation → 13th Amendment abolishes slavery → 14th Amendment → 15th Amendment → 1872 U.S. presidential election → 1876 U.S. presidential election → 1880 U.S. presidential election → 1884 U.S. presidential election → 1888 U.S. presidential election → 1892 U.S. presidential election → 1896 U.S. presidential election → 1900 U.S. presidential election → 1904 U.S. presidential election → 1908 U.S. presidential election → 1912 U.S. presidential election → 1916 U.S. presidential election → 1920 U.S. presidential election → 1924 U.S. presidential election → 1928 U.S. presidential election → 1932 U.S. presidential election → 1936 U.S. presidential election → 1940 U.S. presidential election → 1944 U.S. presidential election → 1948 U.S. presidential election → 1952 U.S. presidential election → 1956 U.S. presidential election

The story

On November 6, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower won a second term in a rematch with Democrat Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower took 457 electoral votes and 57.4 percent of the popular vote. Stevenson won 73 electoral votes, all from Southern and border states, and 42.0 percent. One Alabama elector cast his vote for a local judge, Walter B. Jones.

Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack in 1955 and abdominal surgery in 1956, but voters credited him with ending the Korean War, peace and a strong economy, under the slogan 'I like Ike.' Stevenson proposed ending hydrogen bomb tests and the draft, ideas many saw as risky. In the campaign's last days the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian Revolution and Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt over the Suez Canal, crises that encouraged voters to stick with the general in the White House. Democrats nonetheless kept control of both houses of Congress.

Why it mattered

Eisenhower's second term saw Sputnik, the founding of NASA and the start of the space race.
He sent federal troops to enforce school desegregation at Little Rock in 1957.
Divided government with a Democratic Congress became a common pattern of the postwar era.

Sources

1956 Electoral College Results National Archives
1956 Presidential Election Results American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara

Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made

Community notes

Loading notes…

Learn more ranked by votes

Documentarchives.gov

1956 Electoral College Results

At a glance

When: November 6, 1956
Where: United States (48 states)
Key people: Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican, winner)
Adlai Stevenson II (Democratic nominee)
Richard Nixon (vice president)
Estes Kefauver (Democratic vice-presidential nominee)

457 to 73electoral votes, Eisenhower over Stevenson

57.4%Eisenhower's share of the popular vote

562earlier events it rests on

12later events that depend on it

Couldn't have happened without

1952 U.S. presidential election1952

EssentialThe race was a rematch of 1952, with Eisenhower now the popular incumbent.

Hungarian Revolution1956

HelpedThe Hungarian and Suez crises in the final weeks led voters to rally around the incumbent.

Led to

1960 U.S. presidential election1960

More from World Wars and the Atom

World War I1914 General relativity1915 Russian Revolution1917 1918 influenza pandemic1918 Insulin1922 Quantum mechanics1925