1948 United States presidential election in Alabama
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| Elections in Alabama |
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The 1948 United States presidential election in Alabama was held on November 2, 1948. Alabama voters sent eleven electors to the Electoral College who voted for President and Vice-President. In Alabama, voters voted for electors individually instead of (as in most other states) as a slate.
Since the 1890s, Alabama had been effectively a one-party state ruled by the Democratic Party. Disenfranchisement of almost all African-Americans and a large proportion of poor whites via poll taxes, literacy tests[1] and informal harassment had essentially eliminated opposition parties outside of Unionist Winston County and presidential campaigns in a few nearby northern hill counties. The only competitive statewide elections became Democratic Party primaries that were limited to white voters until the landmark court case of Smith v. Allwright. In presidential elections the Democratic Party had always won over two-thirds of the limited number of votes cast, except in 1928, when Senator James Thomas Heflin embarked on a nationwide speaking tour, partially funded by the Ku Klux Klan, against Roman Catholic Democratic nominee Al Smith and supported Republican Herbert Hoover,[2] who went on to lose the state that year by only seven thousand votes.
In 1946 Alabama’s one-party Democratic rule was severely challenged not merely by the invalidation of its white primary system, but also by the potential effect on the United States' image abroad (and ability to win the Cold War against the radically egalitarian rhetoric of Communism)[3] from the beating and blinding of Isaac Woodard three hours after being discharged from the army. Truman then attempted to launch a Civil Rights bill, involving desegregation of the military. Southern Democrats immediately made such cries as "unconstitutional", "Communist inspired," "a blow to the loyal South and its traditions," "unwarranted and harmful," "not the answer," and "does irreparable harm to interracial relations".[4]
In May of 1948, Alabama’s Democratic presidential elector primary chose electors who were pledged to not vote for incumbent President Truman,[5] and the state Supreme Court ruled that any statute requiring party presidential electors to vote for that party's national nominee was void.[6] Half of Alabama’s delegation then walked out at the party's national convention in Philadelphia because of Truman's endorsement of civil rights for African Americans.[7] This segregationist faction met on July 17, 1948, in Birmingham, nominating South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as its nominee for president. Mississippi governor Fielding L. Wright was nominated for vice president.
A "Loyalist" group would petition governor "Big Jim" Folsom to allow Truman electors on the ballot alongside the “Democratic” electors pledged to Thurmond, but Senator John Sparkman, fearing popular defeat at the hands of the Dixiecrats and a hostile state legislature, decided against placing Truman electors on the ballot.[8] In other Southern states where Truman was on the ballot,[a] Thurmond was forced to run under the label of the States' Rights Democratic Party.
Thurmond overwhelmingly won Alabama by a margin of 60.71 percent, or 130,513 votes, against his closest opponent, Republican New York governor Thomas E. Dewey.[9] This was only a slight decline upon Franklin Roosevelt’s performance in Alabama four years previously, and it is known that many Thurmond voters thought incorrectly that they were actually voting for Truman. Two third-party candidates, Henry A. Wallace of the Progressive Party and Claude A. Watson of the Prohibition Party, appeared on the ballot in Alabama, though neither had any impact. This was the first time ever that a Democrat won without carrying the state. This was the first time since 1872 that the state voted against the Democrats.
Results
| 1948 United States presidential election in Alabama[9] | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | Percentage | Electoral votes | |
| Dixiecrat/Democratic | Strom Thurmond | 171,443 | 79.75% | 11 | |
| Republican | Thomas E. Dewey | 40,930 | 19.04% | 0 | |
| Progressive | Henry A. Wallace | 1,522 | 0.71% | 0 | |
| Prohibition | Claude A. Watson | 1,085 | 0.50% | 0 | |
| Voter turnout (voting age) | 12.5%[10] | ||||
See also
Notes
- ^ Thurmond was on the ballot in all former Confederate slave states, in the border slave state of Kentucky and the postbellum state of North Dakota, besides receiving a total of 3,769 write-in votes in New Hampshire, New York, Maryland, Missouri and California.
References
- ^ Perman, Michael (2001). Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. p. Introduction.
- ^ Chiles, Robert (2018). The Revolution of ‘28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal. Cornell University Press. p. 115. ISBN 9781501705502.
- ^ Geselbracht, Raymond H. (editor); The Civil Rights Legacy of Harry S. Truman, p. 53 ISBN 1931112673
- ^ Boyd, William M.; 'Southern Politics 1948-1952', Phylon, Vol. 13, No. 3 (3rd quarter, 1952), pp. 226-235
- ^ Jenkins, Ray (2012). Blind Vengeance: The Roy Moody Mail Bomb Murders. p. 38. ISBN 0820341010.
- ^ Key, V.O. junior; Southern Politics in State and Nation; p. 340 ISBN 087049435X
- ^ Kehl, James A.; 'Philadelphia, 1948: City of Crucial Conventions', Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, vol. 67, no. 2 (Spring 2000), pp. 313-326
- ^ Barnard, William D. Dixiecrats and Democrats: Alabama Politics. p. 123. ISBN 0817302557.
- ^ a b "1948 Presidential General Election Results – Alabama". Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
- ^ Gans, Curtis and Mulling, Matthew; Voter Turnout in the United States, 1788-2009, p. 481 ISBN 9781604265958
