(2 of 4)
Jewish votes in south Florida's big cities, it looked as if Ike would better his 1952 Florida lead of 90,000. Despite Democratic hopes that Texas, Tennessee and Virginia would return to the fold, Ike seemed headed for new triumphs in all those states. He led in Kentucky. As returns trickled in from the Midwest, scattered islands of resistance developed. In Michigan, thanks to Democratic Governor Mennen Williams' solid lead over G.O.P. Candidate Albert E. Cobo, Stevenson was ahead in heavily unionized Dearborn and Detroit. In scattered upstate precincts of Michigan and Wisconsin, resentful farmers were whittling down the G.O.P.'s 1952 margin. Elsewhere Democratic bastions were toppling. Pennsylvania's Democratic Lackawanna County gave Ike an early edge. For the first time in 36 years New Jersey's Hudson County—the late Boss Hague's old bailiwick—went Republican.
By 9:45 ABC's superarticulate mechanical brain threw caution to the winds. The Eisenhower landslide, it ground out, would reach "the proportions of President Roosevelt's first victory in 1932." At 10 o'clock Adlai Stevenson, busily writing in his room, was quoted as saying that he would not concede until he had heard from California. Said Adlai's sister, Mrs. Ernest Ives: "It's a pathetic situation.''
10 to II O'Clock. Four-fifths of the vote was still to be counted, but it was all over for caution's good grey grandmother, the New York Times. EISENHOWER WINS IN A SWEEP, it decided at 10 o'clock sharp. By that time. Virginia's twelve electoral votes. Maryland's nine, apparently New Jersey's 16 were Eisenhower's, and he was running ahead in Pennsylvania, the state the Democrats had said they had to take in order to win. The Stevenson forces en joyed a few slim sunbeams—14 sure electoral votes in North Carolina (where one Jerry D. Batts of Roanoke Rapids was declared to have cast his vote, though he died with it clutched in his hand), expected pluralities in most of the other Southern states, a good lead in Missouri, a strong opening in industrial Michigan, a slight opening lead in California.
But already the wire-service reporters were pulling out their "gloom descended" leads for the scene around Stevenson head quarters, while in Chicago at 10:30 Stevenson Campaign Manager Jim Finnegan and Campaign Treasurer Matt McCloskey were on the telephones to their home state, Pennsylvania. "How bad did we get licked?" asked McCloskey on one phone. "So we're behind in Lackawanna and Allegheny, too, eh?" Finnegan muttered on another. Only a robust Democratic lead in the Pennsylvania senatorial race brightened Finnegan's wake. The 11 p.m. calculators had Ike leading in states worth 441 electoral votes, Stevenson in states with only 90.