Can Trump do a 'Dewey defeats Truman'?

That's if the Donald beats Hillary despite early predictions that the former would lose, with most polls showing Hillary leading with a margin of five to 12 percentage points

Published Tue, Oct 25, 2016 · 09:50 PM

Washington

DURING the 1948 US presidential election, the press and media were all predicting a tight race. Incumbent Democratic president Harry Truman was not a very popular figure as he was trying to respond to a challenge from the well-regarded Republican challenger and governor of New York, Thomas E Dewey.

Moreover, the electoral base of the Democratic Party seemed to be split with many Democrats in the southern states (who at that time were leaning Democratic or "blue") toying with the idea of voting for third-party presidential candidate Strom Thurmond, who was running under the banner of the segregationist South.

In fact, pollsters speculated that if only a few thousand Democrats in states like Ohio, Illinois and California end up…

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