United States Presidential Election, 1948 (Joe Steele)

The United States presidential election of 1948 saw President Joe Steele elected to an unprecedented fifth term without opposition.

The Candidates
Steele was the only candidate for a second election. So thoroughly had Steele repressed or eliminated opposition that no one was willing to challenge him. Steele did give himself a pretext in the form of the Japanese War, which was well underway, promising victory and arguing that there was no point in changing course then.

The Election
Steele won.

In OTL
The 1948 election is remembered as one of the greatest upsets in American history. Incumbent Harry Truman, who ascended upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, overcame a split in his own Democratic Party to be elected in his own right.

Truman ran for reelection in 1948 with Alben Barkley. Thomas Dewey became the Republican nominee on the strength of his performance in 1944, this time running with Earl Warren. Dewey would come even closer to defeating the far less popular Truman (close enough for the Chicago Tribune to run its infamous headline "Dewey Defeats Truman"), but he would lose that election as well. The Republicans' long Presidential drought would finally end in 1952 with the election of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

Truman's victory was made even more impressive by the fact that a faction of the Democrats composed primarily of representaives of the Southern states, walked out of the Democratic convention to protest Truman's stance on Civil Rights. These "States' Rights Democrats", more commonly called the "Dixiecrats", ran Strom Thurmond. While Thurdmon carried 39 electoral votes, it wasn't enough to derail Truman, who toured the country giving fiery speeches against Dewey and the 80th Congress.