| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Electoral College results | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 1956 United States presidential election was the 43rd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1956. In a five way contest, William F. Knowland of the Republican Party defeated Estes Kefauver, the Populist candidate, W. Averell Harriman, the Democratic candidate, A. Philip Randolph, the Socialist candidate, and Fred Korematsu, the Kosuto Bloc candidate. This election marked the first appearance of the Kosuto Bloc as a political force, representing Japanese participation in Columbian politics.
Incumbent president Thomas E. Dewey chose not to seek a third term, following the tradition set by earlier presidents. The Republicans, divided between liberal and conservative factions, saw a competitive primary in which Knowland and future president Nelson Rockefeller emerged as the two major candidates. Ultimately, Knowland secured the required delegates at the convention and was the presumptive nominee, with Ohio representative Richard Nixon as his running mate. The Populists nominated Estes Kefauver of Tennessee without opposition, wishing to put forward a left-leaning agrarian candidate, and the first from the former Grand Confederation. W. Averell Harriman defeated former incumbent Vice President Adlai Stevenson in the Democratic primary, after narrowly winning Centralia. The Socialists ran A. Philip Randolph a second time, and the newfound Kosuto Bloc nominated civil rights activist Fred Korematsu.
The election was characterized by a bitter-fought competition between Knowland and Kefauver, who both held different approaches to the ongoing Cold War. In the aftermath of the German landing on the Moon, widespread paranoia about Spartacist intrusion led to strong desires to elect a firmly anti-communist candidate, which resulted in a surge in polling for the nationalist, but largely isolationist Knowland. Knowland's campaign slogan, "Knowland Knows the Land", became an iconic phrase during the election. Ultimately, despite having initially competed for control of the Midwest with Kefauver, Knowland won the election, winning by a decent margin in the popular vote. The Socialists and Democrats performed poorly in the election, but improved their margins along minorities compared to previous elections, whereas the Kosuto Bloc secured its goals of preventing all four other candidates from taking the state.