1948 United States Presidential Election
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40 free 1948 United States Presidential Election trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The 1948 presidential election is the most famous upset in American political history. Thomas Dewey, the polished Republican challenger, led every major poll, and reporters, pundits and bookmakers treated the result as settled. Harry Truman, an unpopular incumbent whose own party had split three ways, refused to agree with them. This quiz covers the whole Dewey vs Truman story: the nominating conventions and the running mates, the two breakaway tickets that challenged Truman from the left and the right, the cross-country train campaign, the polls that stopped too early, election night itself, and the newspaper headline that got it all wrong. It is written for students of American history, for teachers who want a ready-made classroom quiz, and for anyone who enjoys a good underdog story. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which newspaper printed the mistaken headline Dewey Defeats Truman on some 150,000 early copies in 1948?
Chicago Daily Tribune
The Chicago Daily Tribune went to press before most results were in, trusting its Washington correspondent's forecast of a landslide. Later editions swapped in a headline about state offices.
Q 02What name is given to Truman's 1948 campaign of short speeches from a train's rear platform in small towns?
Whistle-stop tour
Whistle-stop tour is the phrase, taken from minor stations where a train halted only when signaled. Truman gave hundreds of such speeches that fall.
Q 03What mocking label did Truman pin on the Republican-led 80th Congress during his 1948 race against Dewey?
Do-Nothing
Do-Nothing was Truman's jab, and it drew angry replies from Republican leaders in Congress but no comment at all from Dewey. Truman also called it the worst Congress.
Q 04Which feature of Thomas Dewey's looks delighted cartoonists and dismayed his advisers when he ran against Truman?
His mustache
His mustache stayed for 20 years because his wife, Frances, liked it. A wisecrack that stuck to the dapper Dewey compared him to the little groom on a wedding cake.
Q 05Dewey's 1948 loss to Truman was his second as Republican nominee; which president had beaten him four years earlier?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt beat Dewey in 1944, though Dewey ran him closer than any of his three earlier opponents had. Dewey began the 1948 primaries as the Republican frontrunner.
Q 06Which pollster's surveys showed Dewey's 1948 lead over Truman shrinking from 17 points to five, yet still picked Dewey?
George Gallup
George Gallup had Dewey ahead in all nine of his polls after the conventions. His final interviews were two weeks old by election day, so they missed a late swing to Truman.
Q 07Which institution did Truman order racially integrated by executive order in July 1948, months before facing Dewey?
The armed forces
The armed forces were covered by Executive Order 9981, which abolished discrimination by race, color, religion or national origin. The last all-black unit was disbanded in 1954.
Q 08Which wartime general did factions of both major parties try to draft for president in 1948 before Truman faced Dewey?
Dwight Eisenhower
Dwight Eisenhower turned both parties down, saying soldiers should keep out of politics. Four years later he ran as a Republican and won.
Q 09What nickname was given to the States' Rights Democratic Party, the Southern faction that bolted from Truman in 1948?
Dixiecrats
Dixiecrats blends Dixie and Democrat. The party was founded just days after the Democratic convention adopted a strong civil rights plank.
Q 10Thomas Dewey ran against Truman in 1948 while serving as governor of which state, which he carried by under one point?
New York
New York had re-elected Dewey as governor in 1946 by the largest margin in its history. Two years later he held it against Truman by less than one percent.
Q 11Which state was home to Harry Truman, who returned to the town of Independence to await the 1948 election returns?
Missouri
Missouri welcomed back a president nobody expected to keep his job: some of his own aides had already accepted other work. No reporter on his campaign train thought he would win.
Q 12Which general commanding the occupation of Japan was entered in the 1948 Wisconsin Republican primary against Dewey?
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur could not campaign from Tokyo, and a surprise defeat in Wisconsin all but ended his chances. The Hearst newspapers had backed him loudly.
Q 13Which Kentucky senator gave the 1948 Democratic keynote speech and then became Truman's running mate against Dewey?
Alben Barkley
Q 21The 1948 States' Rights Democrats hoped to throw the election into which body by denying any candidate a majority?
The House of Representatives
The House of Representatives chooses the president when nobody wins an electoral majority. The plan was to trade Southern support there for concessions on segregation.
Q 22Which Minneapolis mayor led the 1948 Democratic convention fight for a civil rights plank that split Truman's party?
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey won the floor vote narrowly, 651.5 to 582.5. The fight made him a national figure, and Minnesota sent him to the Senate that November.
Q 23Which conservative senator was Dewey's chief rival at the 1948 convention, conceding as the third ballot began?
Alben Barkley was only Truman's second choice, picked after a Supreme Court justice refused the spot. At 71 he became the oldest man yet elected vice president.
Q 14Which California governor, who would not campaign in the primaries, became Thomas Dewey's 1948 running mate?
Earl Warren
Earl Warren had hoped the convention would turn to him as a compromise presidential pick. The 1948 defeat proved to be the only election he ever lost.
Q 15Which Cold War operation, begun in June 1948, won Truman broad public approval as he campaigned against Dewey?
Berlin Airlift
Berlin Airlift flights began after Soviet troops cut the land routes into the city's western sectors. Approval of that firm stand is counted among the reasons Truman won.
Q 16Which city hosted the Republican and Democratic conventions of 1948, chosen partly for its new television cable link?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia was wired to the coaxial cable that let NBC and CBS show both conventions live along the East Coast. Only a few minutes of that footage survive.
Q 17As a prosecutor in the 1930s, Thomas Dewey won national fame by convicting which Mafia boss, years before facing Truman?
Lucky Luciano
Lucky Luciano was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in 1936, the greatest win of Dewey's legal career. As governor, Dewey commuted that sentence a decade later.
Q 18Which former vice president, fired by Truman as commerce secretary, ran against him in 1948 on the Progressive ticket?
Henry Wallace
Henry Wallace opposed Truman's hard line toward the Soviet Union, including the Marshall Plan. He finished fourth, with 2.4 percent of the vote and no electoral votes.
Q 19In which city's Union Station did a grinning Truman hold up the Dewey Defeats Truman front page for photographers?
St. Louis
St. Louis lay on Truman's train route back to Washington, and there he was handed the early edition on his railcar's rear platform. He held it up, beaming, for the cameras.
Q 20Truman's 1948 win was the last before the Twenty-second Amendment, ratified in 1951; what did that amendment introduce?
Presidential term limits
Presidential term limits did not bind Truman, who was exempted as the sitting president. He chose not to run again in 1952 anyway.
Robert Taft
Robert Taft, the elder son of President William Howard Taft, could not agree with a third contender on one candidate to block Dewey. Neither man would withdraw for the other.
Q 24What was the sole issue of the 1948 radio debate between Thomas Dewey and a Republican primary rival?
Banning the Communist Party
Banning the Communist Party was the question, and Dewey argued against it as thought control that would not work. Most observers scored the debate for him, and he won the primary four days later.
Q 25Truman called Congress back in July 1948 for a special session named after which day in his home state's farm folklore?
Turnip Day
Turnip Day falls on July 26, when an old saying told farmers to sow their turnips, wet or dry. Truman dared Congress to pass its own party's platform, and it sent him just two bills.
Q 26Truman carried California, Illinois and which third state by under one percentage point each to win the 1948 election?
Ohio
Ohio was the closest state of all, decided by 7,107 votes. Had Dewey taken all three states, he would have won the presidency while losing the popular vote.
Q 27What made the newspaper behind the 1948 Dewey Defeats Truman headline go to press several hours earlier than usual?
A printers' strike
A printers' strike had the paper composing pages on typewriters and photographing them, which meant earlier deadlines. Its first edition went to press before most states had reported.
Q 28A 1948 straw poll of 20,000 farmers that favored Truman over Dewey had them choose a party symbol printed on what?
Chicken feed sacks
Chicken feed sacks from the Staley Milling Company carried one party's emblem or the other, and Truman's won 54 to 46 percent. The company then abandoned the poll.
Q 29On election night 1948 Harry Truman hid from reporters at a hotel, where he had dinner and which treatment before bed?
A Turkish bath
A Turkish bath at the Elms Hotel in Excelsior Springs came first, then sleep. Truman woke at 4 a.m. to hear on the radio that he led by nearly two million votes.
Q 30Truman gave hundreds of 1948 speeches from the rear platform of an armored railcar named for which explorer?
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan was one of six Pullman cars named for explorers, rebuilt with armor plate and bullet-resistant glass. It is the heaviest passenger railcar ever used in the United States.