1956 United States presidential election
43rd quadrennial U.S. presidential election
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 1956. Incumbent Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his running mate, incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, were re-elected to a second term in a landslide victory, defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson II, former Illinois governor and Senator Estes Kefauver, in a rematch of 1952.
Eisenhower, who first became famous for his military leadership in World War II, remained widely popular. A heart attack in 1955 provoked speculation that he would not seek a second term, but his health recovered and he faced no opposition at the 1956 Republican National Convention. Stevenson remained popular with a core of liberal Democrats, but held no office and had no real base. He defeated New York Governor W. Averell Harriman and several other candidates on the first presidential ballot of the 1956 Democratic National Convention. Stevenson called for a significant increase in government spending on social programs and a decrease in military spending.
With the end of the Korean War and a strong economy, Eisenhower was the heavy favorite to win re-election. Supporters of the president focused on his "personal qualities ... his sincerity, his integrity and sense of duty, his virtue as a family man, his religious devotion, and his sheer likeableness", rather than on his leadership record.
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This entry incorporates text from “1956 United States presidential election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.