Truman 1948 MA

[Arbitrage1980]

Truman won Massachusetts by 11 points against Dewey in 1948. This is astounding because it is a bigger margin than Al Smith or FDR's margins in the state. FDR actually underperformed in MA all 4 elections relative to his national popular vote margin. Truman outperformed in MA by 8 points.

Why did Truman do so well here? Given that he was a Midwesterner, he was not a good cultural fit for the state.

[Alben Barkley]

Democratic trends just kept strengthening, I guess. In fact Truman dominated among Catholics by record numbers. This is kinda ironic because he was a Freemason and Catholics don’t exactly have the best historic relations with Freemasons.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Compared to 1944, Truman did worse in the interior/west and Cape Cod/Plymouth, but better in Boston/the northeast and Bristol.   A lot of Irish were not enthusiastic about going into WW2, so it's possible that played a role; David Walsh, senator until 1947, in particular did not have a good relationship with FDR in part due to their different foreign policy views. Many were probably be more motivated to support the Democrats over issues like labor relations (Truman having just unsuccessfully vetoed Taft-Hartley).   Over this period I believe there was also some demographic shift due to differential birth rates, though there was no longer much immigration.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Compared to 1944, Truman did worse in the interior/west and Cape Cod/Plymouth, but better in Boston/the northeast and Bristol.   A lot of Irish were not enthusiastic about going into WW2, so it's possible that played a role; David Walsh, senator until 1947, in particular did not have a good relationship with FDR in part due to their different foreign policy views. Many were probably be more motivated to support the Democrats over issues like labor relations (Truman having just unsuccessfully vetoed Taft-Hartley).   Over this period I believe there was also some demographic shift due to differential birth rates, though there was no longer much immigration.

I would love to see statistics of Catholic percentage broken down by age group to get a good read on how much birth rates had a large impact. I have long been of the opinion that was a critical factors in the state's rapid shift to the Democrats in this period.

[Alcibiades]

The reason that MA was so close in 1932, despite having been one of only two Northern states to vote Dem in 1928, was the extreme polarisation between Catholics and WASPs. It was a very inelastic state, somewhat like Mississippi today, with WASPs being analogous to whites and Catholics to blacks. By 1948, this divide, while still undoubtedly still in play, had softened considerably, as Catholics became integrated into the white mainstream, allowing Truman to win the state more comfortably in a D +4 year.

[RINO Tom]

It might just be as simple as the demographics caught up.  Replace "Catholics" or "Irish" with "Hispanic" or something today, in a state like Arizona, along with some continued White defection from the GOP.  I remember seeing a quote that during the 1930s, alongside the fact that the GOP was being routed, Democrats were saying that the GOP coalition was too ethnically restrictive to survive in the future.  Turns out they were right, as the GOP made HUGE inroads with Catholics of both Irish and Italian descent over the next several decades.

[Alcibiades]

It might just be as simple as the demographics caught up.  Replace "Catholics" or "Irish" with "Hispanic" or something today, in a state like Arizona, along with some continued White defection from the GOP.  I remember seeing a quote that during the 1930s, alongside the fact that the GOP was being routed, Democrats were saying that the GOP coalition was too ethnically restrictive to survive in the future.  Turns out they were right, as the GOP made HUGE inroads with Catholics of both Irish and Italian descent over the next several decades.

This makes sense. According to the US Religion Census, in 1936 Catholics made up 39.9% of MA’s population, but by 1952 this had risen to 48.4%.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

It might just be as simple as the demographics caught up.  Replace "Catholics" or "Irish" with "Hispanic" or something today, in a state like Arizona, along with some continued White defection from the GOP.  I remember seeing a quote that during the 1930s, alongside the fact that the GOP was being routed, Democrats were saying that the GOP coalition was too ethnically restrictive to survive in the future.  Turns out they were right, as the GOP made HUGE inroads with Catholics of both Irish and Italian descent over the next several decades.

This makes sense. According to the US Religion Census, in 1936 Catholics made up 39.9% of MA’s population, but by 1952 this had risen to 48.4%.

note though also that the Catholic church had a lot of conversions in the US in the postwar era, so some of the change is due to that.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Democratic trends just kept strengthening, I guess. In fact Truman dominated among Catholics by record numbers. This is kinda ironic because he was a Freemason and Catholics don’t exactly have the best historic relations with Freemasons.

Well I've read somewhere that at least one third of American presidents were Freemasons, so that's kind of inevitable.