Mississippi in this time period was a one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party. The Republican Party was virtually nonexistent as a result of disenfranchisement among poor whites and African Americans,[2] including voter intimidation against those who refused to vote Democratic. The state Republican Party led by Perry Wilbon Howard II — who resided in Washington D.C. after 1928 — was entirely drawn from the state’s tiny black middle class and never contested non-presidential elections,[3] serving entirely to sell federal patronage,[4] mostly to white Democrats.[5] The 1948 election split the National Democratic Party and segregationist Southern Democrats over the issue of civil rights for African Americans.[6] In the 1952 election, Stevenson, a moderate on race issues, selected the segregationist Senator Sparkman as his running mate to avoid another split in the Democratic vote. However, this was not enough for some white Mississippians, who felt that the national Republican Party already offered a better prospect for their conservative social and economic goals.[3]
Campaign
Because the state Republican Party remained under black-and-tan control due to state politicians’ longstanding fear of competition with a lily-white GOP,[4] national Republican candidates Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon ran as “Independents for Eisenhower”. Both Howard’s black-and-tans and the long-insurgent “lily-white” faction led by George L. Sheldon of Clinton agreed to withdraw their slates in favour of the Eisenhower Democrats in mid-October.[7]
Despite Stevenson winning the state, Eisenhower won many Black Belt counties on the Mississippi River with large nonvoting African American populations.[8] Eisenhower won five of the nine counties with black populations above 70%. This was due to white Republican voters rather than black voters, who were ineligible to vote.[9]
The Stevenson-Sparkman ticket carried Mississippi and its eight electoral votes with 60.44 percent of the popular vote, amounting to a total of 172,566 votes. These results, however, were the weakest for a state Democrat since the 1872 election when the state remained occupied by Union troops and Republican Ulysses S. Grant carried the state.[19] It represented a large swing for the Republicans from 1948, when Thomas E. Dewey won only 2.62 percent of the vote.
In contrast, the northeastern hills, which had given President Truman his highest proportion in 1948,[20] along with the southeastern pineywoods both voted solidly for Stevenson, although not by the margins pre-1948 Democrats ran up throughout Mississippi. Whereas Delta whites had permanently estranged themselves from the Democratic Party over issues of economics and race, Hills and Pine Belt counties, much more economically populist although even more socially conservative,[21] had not shared much in the Dixiecrat upheaval despite all giving majorities to “Democrat” Strom Thurmond in 1948. The divide between traditional Democrat Stevenson and the independent electors pledged to Eisenhower was closely related to the cleavage between “Delta” and “Hills”[22] seen in Democratic white primaries during the first half of the twentieth century.[20]
1952 began to show signs of the impending collapse of Democratic dominance in Mississippi and the rest of the South. The vote share for the state Democratic candidate would decline in the next two subsequent elections, ultimately paving the way for Barry Goldwater’s victory in Mississippi and the Deep South in 1964.
References
^"U.S. presidential election, 1952". Facts on File. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved October 24, 2013. Eisenhower, born in Texas, considered a resident of New York, and headquartered at the time in Paris, finally decided to run for the Republican nomination
^Wright-Austin, Sharon D. (2006). The Transformation of Plantation Politics: Black Politics, Concentrated Poverty, and Social Capital in the Mississippi Delta. p. 45. ISBN9780791468012.
^ abBusbee, Westley F. (2014). Mississippi: A History. pp. 276–278. ISBN9781118822722.
^Lauderdale, W.M.; Allen, Robert S. (September 8, 1952). "Mississippi Is Still Democratic Although Eisenhower Is Strong". The Columbus Ledger. Columbus, Mississippi. p. 5.
^Fuller, Keith (October 23, 1952). "Survey by State Newspapers Indicates Mississippi Will Stay Democrat in Election". The Daily Herald. Biloxi, Mississippi. p. 4.
^"US Poll Shows — Eisenhower Leading Stevenson in Electoral Votes, but Governor Has More States in His Column". The Greeneville Sun. Greeneville, Tennessee. Princeton Research Service. October 25, 1952. pp. 1, 8.
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