My dad was all over the map politically. He usually voted against someone more than he did for anyone. He was a television reporter, so he got to meet a lot of the candidates... he met Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, John and Robert Kennedy, LBJ, Muskie, and an assortment of others. His favorites were Truman, whom he met and interviewed after his presidency, and Bobby Kennedy, whom he met when he was running in 1968. He accidentally rapped Ike on the knuckles with a microphone during a whistle-stop speech and got a dirty look from him. I got to shake LBJ's hand in 1964, when he was campaigning. His hand was huge and his grip bone-crushing, as you might expect.
I know that my dad voted for FDR in 1944, which was the first year he was eligible to vote (he was in the Army at the time). I'm not sure how he went in '48. I know he voted for Stevenson at least once, but I don't know if he did both times, or if only once, which time he did. He went for Kennedy in '60 and Goldwater in '64. I think the Goldwater vote was more an anti-LBJ than anything else. In '68 he voted for Nixon, mostly in exasperation over the Democratic party's inability to wrap up the Vietnam war, and despised Nixon thereafter, because he thought he betrayed him. So in '72 he voted for McGovern, and I believe he voted for the Democratic candidate every year thereafter. He disliked Reagan about as much as he did Nixon, and was a big fan of Clinton's.
Wow, votes for Stevenson, Goldwater, and McGovern. He definitely wasn't your typical American, that's for sure.
Though I'm sure quite a few majority black counties in the Deep South voted for all of the above three candidates.
