Since 1952, no major national party convention has gone beyond the first ballot to select the party’s standard-bearer. During that year’s Democratic National Convention, it took three ballots by convention delegates to nominate Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson for president.

The last multi-ballot GOP Convention was in 1948, when delegates voted three times before finally selecting New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey as their party’s nominee. Notwithstanding the now-infamous Chicago Daily Tribune banner headline: “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”, Dewey lost to Democrat Harry Truman in November.