The Crucial Third Ballot

Some of the professional political handicappers and the sharper railbirds among the newsmen last week made out their form sheets on the Republican Convention. There were many imponderables. For one thing, no trainer or stable manager had complete confidence that his entry could be brought home in front with the needed 548 delegates (a simple majority of the 1,094 total). For another thing, while it looked like a Dewey-Vandenberg horse race on form, one of the entries was probably not going to start running until about the three-quarters pole. But handicappers agreed, almost to a man, on the way the race would probably be run. The consensus:

First Ballot. Dewey will break in front, with 300-plus delegates; Taft next with more than 200; Stassen close up with about 150; Vandenberg well back in the field of favorite sons, carrying Michigan's 41 and perhaps a few more.

Second Ballot. The jockeying by the front-runners begins. Each will hope to leave the field far behind. Many of the favorite sons will drop out and go to their second choices. Dewey will probably lengthen his lead, to 360-plus. Taft might go to 250-plus. Stassen would slip. Vandenberg will begin to show up ahead of the other favorite sons, probably get up to 100-plus votes.

Third Ballot. This will be the make-or-break point for Dewey. He must either get far ahead, far enough never to be seriously challenged, or he loses the race. The swing to Vandenberg is the test; it may well be started by big blocs of votes from Stassen's following. This is also the point of greatest pressure on the large delegations, which hold the key to nomination. If Bob Taft fails to hold his strength, Illinois' Governor Dwight Green, who is eager to be Vice President, might decide to flip over his state's 56 votes to Dewey. Pennsylvania's Governor Jim Duff, who wants Vandenberg to win, might lose to Dewey some of the 40-plus (out of 73) delegates he controls.

New Jersey's Governor Alfred Driscoll, supposedly for Vandenberg, might also switch his state's 35 votes to Dewey. Those are the big ifs of the convention.

Fourth Ballot. Unless Dewey has won on the third, this is Vandenberg's big chance. If Duff and Driscoll have held out against a rush to Dewey through the crucial third ballot, if Massachusetts and California have not deserted their favorite sons, a Vandenberg bandwagon could start to roll. If it does not start here, it probably never will.

Fifth Ballot et seq. If Dewey has failed on the third, and Vandenberg has not shown a commanding upsurge on the fourth, the race will go to the best behind-the-scenes trader--Speaker Joe Martin, Pennsylvania's Senator Ed Martin, California's Governor Earl Warren or anybody else on whom the party's leaders can agree.

Thus the convention hinges on the big-delegation states, including New York if the race goes against Dewey. The men to watch for the vital switches will be Pennsylvania's Duff, California's Warren, New Jersey's Driscoll, Illinois' Green and Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge, a staunch Vandenberg man, who this week was chosen as chairman of the convention's important Platform Committee.

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