On election eve, Truman spoke to the nation by radio from his home in Independence. "From the bottom of my heart I thank the people of the United States for their cordiality to me and their interest in the affairs of this great nation and of the world," he said. "I trust the people, because when they know the facts, they do the right thing."

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On election day, Thomas Dewey and his wife voted in a school on East 51st. Street in New York City. A nearby skyscraper was festooned with a sign that read, "Good luck, Mr. President." When he emerged from the booth, Dewey said, "Well, I know of two votes we got anyway."

Harry Truman, with wife Bess and daughter Margaret, voted at 10:00 A.M. in Independence. They posed for photographers and when asked about his chances, Truman responded, "It can’t be anything but a victory." He said that he would probably go to bed early rather than sitting up and listening to the results. He did exactly that. As reporters and cameramen conducted a sort of "death watch" around his house awaiting a statement from Truman conceding defeat, however, the president slipped away with a Secret Service detail and drove to the Elms Hotel in Excelsior Springs. After a ham sandwich and glass of milk, Truman retired early.

Walter Cronkite was among that group of surprised press representatives who did not find out until the next morning that the president hadn’t been there. Cronkite later recalled, "after we had become good friends, the president’s daughter, Margaret Truman, who was home that night, denied that the family had indulged in any such gambit, but I thought her denial was a little tentative."

President Truman was awakened at midnight and told that he was 1.2 million votes ahead but that a Dewey victory was still predicted. At 4:00 A.M. he was awakened again and told that his lead in the popular vote was now 2 million. The commentator was still predicting his defeat. Truman rose, dressed, and hurried to Kansas City, knowing that his own prediction was coming true. Meanwhile, in New York City, Dewey’s campaign manager was telling a large press contingent, "We’re in there fighting. The returns are still coming in but it looks as if we won’t know until morning."

When morning came, the results were clear. Thomas Dewey had polled 21,991,291 votes, while Truman had received 24,179,345. Henry Wallace had cost Truman the electoral votes of New York, and Thurmond had taken Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, but the president had prevailed in the farm states of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio, all of which had gone for Dewey in 1944. The Wallace vote in California was far below predictions, and the President carried that state as well. In all, Truman gathered 303 electoral votes. Dewey came up with 189 and Thurmond earned a total of 39 from the four states he carried and a single, renegade elector from Tennessee who refused to cast his ballot for Truman. After traveling 21,928 miles and making a total of 275 speeches, Harry Truman had engineered the most stunning upset victory in presidential election history.

At 11:14 on the morning after election day, Thomas Dewey–the man every pollster, pundit, and politician in the country had believed was destined to the next president–wired Harry Truman: "My heartiest congratulations to you on your election and every good wish for a successful administration."

Soon after the election, several newspapers dropped George Gallup’s services. He and the other pollsters promised to determine how they could have been so wrong. They soon discovered that they had stopped polling far too early. Many voters had remained undecided until the very end–then they had cast their votes for the incumbent. After the 1948 race, pollsters adjusted their methods so that the people sampled were even more representative, and they continued to take polls right up to election day.

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