1968: Urban/suburban Wallace support

[Alcibiades]

In 1968, George Wallace’s strongest performances were generally to be found throughout the rural South. By contrast, Nixon won most of the region’s major metropolitan areas, such as Dallas, Houston, some Atlanta suburbs, Charlotte, Raleigh, the Richmond suburbs, and NoVa, as was typical of the era, which saw emerging Republican strength in the suburban South and Sunbelt.

However, there were some notable Wallace successes in cities and suburbs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he won most in the Deep South, such as Birmingham, St. Tammany Parish and several Atlanta suburban counties. Nonetheless, there were two notable results in the Outer South: Wallace won Montgomery County, TX (a stark contrast to Nixon sweeping the Dallas area and winning Harris and Fort Bend Counties), as well as Nashville (Davidson County) itself, and its suburbs.

How did Wallace win these places, which one might expect to go to Nixon, or even, in Nashville’s case, Humphrey, and more generally, what was the nature of Wallace’s urban and suburban support, and how did his voter base in those areas differ from Nixon’s and Humphrey’s?

[TDAS04]

Possibly the most surprising Wallace county was Hamilton County, TN (Chattanooga).

[Alcibiades]

Possibly the most surprising Wallace county was Hamilton County, TN (Chattanooga).

I missed that one - you’re very right.

[Intell]

I assume white-flight suburbs of middle class/lower income white people were Wallace's strength, while already exisiting white enclaves in urban areas or wealthier inner ring old suburbs were Nixon's strength. Mountain Brook for example went to Nixon, while Vesivista hills went for Wallace.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

I wrote a bit about Wallace's support in parts of Northwest Indiana (esp. Lake and Porter Counties) here:

In Indiana his best counties were Morgan, Lake, and Porter. He got 16-18 percent in these counties. porter and Lake are in the region, the chicago suburbs and exurbs, so there was probably some racial tension. Morgan is a county in central Indiana that has long been associated with racism and the KKK.

Just want to clarify the points about Lake and Porter: in the 1960s these counties were less suburbs of Chicago so much as they were suburbs of cities like Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago, which all had much larger populations and industrial bases than today. Porter County is unique in that the big steel mills are not actually near any major city like U.S. Steel in Gary or Inland was in East Chicago, but rather along the shoreline in a relatively sparsely-populated area

From the 1910s to 1970s Gary and East Chicago in particular attracted huge numbers of poor whites from Appalachia and the South, along with huge numbers of blacks. Add this on top of the huge ethnic southern/central European populations that had immigrated between the 1880s and 1920s and you've got a mix for nasty racial tensions.

There was pretty extreme white flight from Gary and East Chicago in the 1950s - 1970s era, but overall population didn't decline very sharply due to the huge influx of southern blacks. A good illustration of these tensions is the Gary mayoral election of 1967, which foreshadowed major defections of white middle and working class voters in 1968 and 1972 to Wallace and Nixon. Lots of white Democratic voters defected to the Republican candidate and the Lake County Democratic Party actively undermined their own black mayoral candidate (Richard Hatcher), and the police were accused of voter intimidation and sabotaging voting machines. In the end he won, and Gary became a majority-black city around 1968, and massive white flight took place in the 60s and 70s to suburbs like Merrillville and Crown Point.

The eastern portion of Lake County and much of northern Porter County had (and to some degree still does have) pretty bad racial dynamics akin to the South. The western portion of Lake County was more suburbs of Hammond and the south side of Chicago, and had a more diversified economic base and less racial tensions. Hammond actually was majority non-Hispanic white until 2000 with only about a 15-20% black population; much like other areas with light industry, it's become more Hispanic now.

It's the steel producing areas of the south side of Chicago and NW Indiana that seemed to have the worst racial tensions and worst declines.