Open Conventions

Report Outline
Compettion for Presidential Nominations
Development of National Convention System
Notable Open or Deadlocked Conventions

Compettion for Presidential Nominations

Uncertainties in the 1952 Pre-Convention Picture

Today, two months before the national political conventions, no one can predict with any degree of certainty who will be the presidential nominee of either of the two major parties. No similar situation on the eve of the conventions has occurred since 1920. In the intervening presidential years, the identity of the nominee of one, if not both, of the parties has been a foregone conclusion in advance of the national party gatherings. It is necessary to go back 32 years to find an occasion when choice of both Democratic and Republican standard bearers was in doubt in the same pre-convention period.

President Truman's decision not to run again, combined with the refusal of Gov. Stevenson of Illinois to enter the race despite White House pleas, promises to make the Democratic conclave an open convention in which a number of less prominent candidates will engage in a free-for-all contest for the party's top prize. On the Republican side, there is a possibility that the struggle between the two major contenders—Sen. Taft and Gen. Eisenhower—will produce a deadlock that can be broken only by the nomination of a dark-horse or favorite-son candidate. But a political picture can change rapidly and radically. Before the Republicans gather at Chicago on July 7, and before the Democrats follow them to that city on July 21, events or developments now unforeseen may make for a quick decision in one or both national conventions.

Present uncertainty stems from the close nature of the Taft-Eisenhower competition for the Republican nomination and from the failure to date of any Democratic candidate to display outstanding strength. Approximately one-half of the 1,206 delegates to the Republican convention, and of the 1,230 delegates to the Democratic convention, have been chosen in the state primaries or conventions so far held. By far the larger number of the Republican delegates already selected are known to favor either Taft or Eisenhower. But the largest single group among the Democrats already named consists of uncommitted delegates, and the commitments of the others are scattered among nearly a dozen individuals, Absence from the Republican and Democratic folds of leaders whose claims on the respective nominations would have to be treated as beyond challenge keeps the situation fluid on both sides.