Mississippi 1952

[TheReckoning]

There’s an interesting thing I’ve noticed about Mississippi’s elections results in the 1944, 1948, and 1952 elections.

1944: FDR 93.6%, 168k votes
          Thomas Dewey 6.4%, 12k votes
          Turnout: 180k votes, ~16% of voting age population (according to Wikipedia)

          Pretty much what one would expect for Mississippi at this time.

1948: Thurmond 87.2%, 168k votes
         10.1%, 19k votes
          Dewey 2.6%, 5k votes
           Turnout: 192k votes, ~16% of voting age population
            Keep in mind here that Thurmond was in Mississippi (and much of the south) thought of as the “real” Democratic candidate uncorrupted by Northern interests. So a vast majority of Thurmond’s support came from Democrats. But 1952 is where

1952: Stevenson 60.4%, 172k votes
          Eisenhower 39.6%, 113k votes
           Turnout: 286k votes, ~24% of voting age population.

           Stevenson’s getting about the same raw number of votes as expected for a Democratic candidate, while Eisenhower’s huge increase seems to be from entirely new voters. My understanding is that at this time, poorer whites were starting to register in larger numbers in the South, but why would they be inclined to vote for Ike over Stevenson? So who were these new voters for Eisenhower?
             
         

[seeking mystical annihilation]

The poorer whites in the whiter upcountry were the demographic that largely stayed Democratic at this time. As in the rest of the Deep South, the Republican shift began in lowland agricultural areas where there was more racial diversity and therefore more racial tension, as well as no manufacturing/union presence (not that there was too much of that to speak of anywhere in MS, SC, etc). Even in 1964 you can see a cluster in the northeast corner of the state where Goldwater doesn't quite manage North Korea margins.

[TheReckoning]

The poorer whites in the whiter upcountry were the demographic that largely stayed Democratic at this time. As in the rest of the Deep South, the Republican shift began in lowland agricultural areas where there was more racial diversity and therefore more racial tension, as well as no manufacturing/union presence (not that there was too much of that to speak of anywhere in MS, SC, etc). Even in 1964 you can see a cluster in the northeast corner of the state where Goldwater doesn't quite manage North Korea margins.

So then who were all those Eisenhower voters then? Were they new voters who had just registered, or were they FDR voters?

[CadetCashBoi]

The poorer whites in the whiter upcountry were the demographic that largely stayed Democratic at this time. As in the rest of the Deep South, the Republican shift began in lowland agricultural areas where there was more racial diversity and therefore more racial tension, as well as no manufacturing/union presence (not that there was too much of that to speak of anywhere in MS, SC, etc). Even in 1964 you can see a cluster in the northeast corner of the state where Goldwater doesn't quite manage North Korea margins.

So then who were all those Eisenhower voters then? Were they new voters who had just registered, or were they FDR voters?

It may just be that they were Republicans who previously had seen no point in voting but decided to turn out for Eisenhower since he was the first GOP nominee who wasn’t a completely hopeless cause in the south since Harding.

[TDAS04]

1948 may have left a lingering bad taste in the Deep South for the national Democratic Party.  When given only two options, Ike and Stevenson, Ike naturally improved upon the percentages of prior Republicans—as many Thurmond voters in such places as Mississippi and South Carolina were still leery of a National Democratic nominee such as Stevenson, after Hubert Humphrey had proclaimed “the bright sunshine of human rights” 4 years prior at the 1948 convention.

South Carolina was even more extreme in the spike of Republican support in 1952.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The answer is a combination of new voters and also pre-existing ones, both skewing heavily either from the Thurmond vote or similar to the profile of voters that Thurmond did best among but for one reason or another did not vote.

Eisenhower being such a national figure as he was, was also able to transcend historic divides in a way that no other Republican could. "Yea, he is a Republican, but its IKE". And a lot of people served in the military or had relatives who did during the war.

Combine IKE's status as such with the growing discontent with the national Democratic Party, and you get a surge of Republican support in 1952.