“What’s the Use of Going Through with the Election?”

This cartoon concerns the 1948 presidential election. President Harry S. Truman, the Democratic Presidential nominee in the election of 1948, was widely expected to lose by a large margin to Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey. This cartoon, printed just days before the election, shows Dewey confidently looking over the shoulder of a frowning Truman as they read bulletins showing the prevailing public opinion at the time. Despite several polls predicting a landslide victory for Dewey, Truman won the election in one of the biggest and most well-known political upsets in U.S. history. Journalists at the Chicago Tribune were so convinced that Dewey would win that they prematurely printed the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" on the front page.