In the presidential election of 1948, the incumbent president Harry S. Truman was facing off against his Republican challenger, Thomas Dewey. Truman had succeeded to the presidency in 1945 following the death of President Franklin Roosevelt. The election, considered to be the greatest upset in American election history, had virtually every single indicator predicting Dewey as the victor. There may have only been one person in the United States who firmly believed Harry Truman would win the election: Harry Truman himself.