Scoreboard

All week long the votes drifted in from the scattered precincts. By week's end it was clear that the U.S. had given President Dwight Eisenhower a record 34,750,000 votes, with a plurality of 9,300,000 (57.7%) over Democrat Adlai Stevenson, and an electoral total of 457 out of 531. (Total vote cast: 60,180,000, about one million less than 1952's alltime high.) The voters also gave Eisenhower a Democratic Congress, and at the state level slightly increased the number of Democratic governors.

The Democrats went into the 1956 elections with a 49 to 47 edge in the U.S. Senate. For a while last week it appeared they would increase that margin. But South Dakota's wispy G.O.P. Senator Francis Case, after trailing Democrat Ken Holum for hours, finally pulled through. And in Kentucky next day came a narrow victory for Republican Thruston Morton over Assistant Senate Majority Leader Earle Clements (see below). That brought the Senate count right back to 49 to 47 for the Democrats.

In the House, the Democratic victory was more decisive. Going into the election, the Democrats held 230 House seats (needed for control: 218). They picked up all their seats west of the Mississippi: one apiece in Iowa. Kansas. Missouri, South Dakota, Nevada and Montana; two apiece in Oregon and California. The Republicans gained one apiece in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana. Michigan and Pennsylvania, two in New Jersey and West Virginia. Total: at least 233 Democratic, with three still in doubt.

Of the 48 governors, 27 were Democrats and 21 were Republicans before the election. Of the 30 state houses contested this year, 14 were Democratic and 16 Republican. The Republicans dumped Democrats in West Virginia. Ohio and New Mexico; the Democrats routed Republicans in Massachusetts. Iowa. Kansas, Oregon and Washington. Net Democratic gain: one. Still undecided at week's end: Rhode Island.

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