^Adding to the above, Barry Goldwater in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1968 (and in 1972), and Ronald Reagan in 1980 almost certainly won Thurmond 1948 voters, particularly since all three of these Republicans were endorsed by Thurmond himself. Thurmond's influence helped to decide South Carolina in those years, particularly in 1968, when Nixon prevailed by a narrow margin over George Wallace. In 1976 of course, South Carolina went by 13% for Jimmy Carter, although Thurmond endorsed and campaigned for Gerald Ford. It's possible that Ford still won a majority of living Thurmond 1948 voters, but my guess is that Carter cut deeply into them-of course, his overall margin of victory was provided by blacks. Most living Thurmond 1948 voters in Georgia, on the other hand, probably went for their native son Carter.
I am not totally sure that Nixon won Thurmond voters in 1968 considering that George Wallace destroyed him among White voters in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana - three states where Thurmond swept in 1948 as he was put on the ballot as the official Democratic candidate (and which collectively had roughly half of the total national votes for Strom).
That's true. I should have said Thurmond voters in South Carolina, where Nixon did best in the counties that had strongly supported Thurmond twenty years previously. In the other Deep Southern States, they almost certainly did go for George Wallace.
South Carolina results:
Thurmond: 72% with 102,607 votes
Wallace: 32% with 215,430 votes
I expect that the majority of Thurmond voters went for Wallace. Notice that the number of Wallace voters was double the number of Thurmond voters, despite being a way smaller share of the electorate. You have to remember when looking at the percentages that the majority of southerners were disenfranchised in the 1940s. MS and SC had some of the strictest voting rules in the union, and these laws essentially kept their states as Democratic strongholds for almost a century — from the end of Reconstruction to the Civil Rights era.
People forget that somewhere like SC or MS it wasn’t just blacks disenfranchised but also many poor whites. SC in particular during Jim Crow had the most restricted franchise in the nation, resulting in a tiny, wealthy, elitist electorate unwavering in its loyalty to the Democratic Party.
Ironically it would be some of these voters who would be early Republican converts, while newly enfranchised white voters were more Democratic.
