The Counting Begins

Wendell Willkie got a bare majority of New Hampshire's eleven delegates, fewer than his supporters expected. This was the standout fact in the confused balloting of the first U.S. preferential primary of 1944.

New Hampshire's quirky election laws caused all the confusion. These laws bind any delegates pledged to a candidate to stay pledged no-matter-what, until their candidate's name is no longer before the convention. For this reason Wendell Willkie had urged his delegates not to pledge officially to him. Three men nonetheless officially pledged themselves. They lost. Six men who "unofficially" made their Willkie sympathies known (including two-term Governor Robert O. Blood) were elected. But two of the top three vote-getting delegates were antiseptically committed to no one. And two others of the winning eleven had given their ironclad official pledge to Tom Dewey. The Dewey men beat out the Willkieite state G.O.P. chairman.

North Carolina has 25 votes at the G.O.P. convention. Whereas Wendell Willkie had worked hard for only six votes in New Hampshire, Tom Dewey now apparently had plucked off 25 votes without seeming effort. With a neat bit of stagecraft timing, Joe Hanley, Dewey's faithful Lieutenant Governor, turned up in North Carolina to keynote the state's Republican convention. Forthwith, delegates with whoop & holler voted unanimously to "draft" New York's cagey Governor.

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