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1952 United States presidential election in Tennessee

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Nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower Adlai Stevenson Party Republican Democratic Home state New York Illinois Running mate Richard Nixon John Sparkman Electoral vote 11 0 Popular vote 446,147 443,710 Percentage 49.99% 49.71%

County results Congressional district results Eisenhower   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90% Stevenson   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90%

President before election Harry S. Truman Democratic Elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican

Elections in Tennessee
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The 1952 United States presidential election in Tennessee took place on November 4, 1952, as part of the 1952 United States presidential election. Tennessee voters chose 11 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

For over a century after the Civil War, Tennessee was divided according to political loyalties established in that war. Unionist regions covering almost all of East Tennessee, Kentucky Pennyroyal-allied Macon County, and the five Western Highland Rim counties of Carroll, Henderson, McNairy, Hardin and Wayne voted Republican — generally by landslide margins — as they saw the Democratic Party as the "war party" who had forced them into a war they did not wish to fight. Contrariwise, the rest of Middle and West Tennessee who had supported and driven the state's secession was equally fiercely Democratic as it associated the Republicans with Reconstruction. After the disfranchisement of the state’s African-American population by a poll tax was largely complete in the 1890s, the Democratic Party was certain of winning statewide elections if united, although unlike the Deep South Republicans would almost always gain thirty to forty percent of the statewide vote from mountain and Highland Rim support.

Between 1896 and 1948, the Republicans would win statewide contests three times but only in the second did they receive down-ballot coattails by winning three congressional seats in addition to the rock-ribbed GOP First and Second Districts. In the early 1910s, prohibitionist “Independent Democrats” fled the party and formed a coalition, known as the “Fusionists,” with Republicans to elect Ben W. Hooper Governor, whilst in 1920 the national anti-Wilson and anti-League of Nations tide allowed the GOP to carry a few traditionally Democratic areas in Middle Tennessee and with them the state, and in 1928 anti-Catholicism against Democratic nominee Al Smith gave this powerfully fundamentalist state to Herbert Hoover.

After the beginning of the Great Depression, however, for the next third of a century the Republicans would rarely contest statewide offices seriously despite continuing dominance of East Tennessee and half a dozen Unionist counties in the middle and west of the state. The Crump political machine that dominated state politics for a decade and a half, however, broke down in 1948 after Crump supported Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond but his own subordinates dissented knowing that a Democratic split would hand the state to the Republicans. Even Crump’s long-time ally Senator Kenneth D. McKellar broke with him, and a Middle Tennessee liberal, Estes Kefauver, won the state’s Senate seat. In 1949, after a failed effort six years before, Tennessee would substantially modify its poll tax and entirely abolish it two years later, largely due to the fact that the Crump machine had “block bought” voters’ poll taxes.

The abolition of the poll tax would, if not to the same extent as in South Carolina, substantially increase voter turnout in Tennessee. There was also the issue of the substantial Dixiecrat vote from 1948, especially with Thurmond’s endorsement of Republican nominees former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower and California Senator Richard Nixon.

Predictions

Results

Results by county

Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican

• Anderson
• Carroll
• Chester
• Hamilton
• Lawrence
• Meigs
• Sullivan

Counties that flipped from Dixiecrat to Democratic

• Shelby
• Fayette

Analysis

Despite expectations that Democratic nominees Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II and running mate Alabama Senator John Sparkman had a slightly better chance of carrying the state, Tennessee would be won by Eisenhower with 49.99 percent of the popular vote, against Stevenson’s 49.71 percent. Eisenhower’s 0.28 percentage point victory was the first of three consecutive Republican victories in the state, as Tennessee would not vote Democratic again until Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964. The result deviated little from long-established partisan patterns, with Chester County — where Eisenhower was the first-ever Republican victor – the only county Eisenhower carried that neither Harding nor Hoover won. Nonetheless, whereas Harding’s and Hoover’s victories were based upon gains in Middle Tennessee, gains in the pro-Dixiecrat cotton counties of West Tennessee were most critical for Eisenhower: fifteen of the top twenty-four Thurmond counties were also amongst the top twenty-four in terms of Democratic loss since 1936.

See also

• United States presidential elections in Tennessee

Notes

1. Except for two votes in Shelby County, votes for the Christian Nationalist Party were listed as a state-wide total and not by counties.
2. The total for this county includes two votes for Christian Nationalist candidate Douglas Macarthur.
3. This total includes 377 votes for Christian Nationalist candidate Douglas Macarthur that were not separated by county.

References

1. "United States Presidential election of 1952 — Encyclopædia Britannica". Retrieved July 25, 2017.
2. "U.S. presidential election, 1952". Facts on File. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved October 24, 2013. Eisenhower, born in Texas, considered a resident of New York, and headquartered at the time in Paris, finally decided to run for the Republican nomination
3. ^ "1952 Presidential Election Results – Tennessee". Dave Leip’s U.S. Election Atlas.
4. Wright, John K. (October 1932). "Voting Habits in the United States: A Note on Two Maps". Geographical Review. 22 (4): 666–672. Bibcode:1932GeoRv..22..666W. doi:10.2307/208821. JSTOR 208821.
5. Key (Jr.), Valdimer Orlando; Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York, 1949), pp. 282-283
6. Lyons, William; Scheb (II), John M.; Stair, Billy (2001). Government and Politics in Tennessee. Univ. of Tennessee Press. pp. 183–184. ISBN 1572331410.
7. Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, pp. 208, 210 ISBN 9780691163246
8. Grantham, Dewey W. (Fall 1995). "Tennessee and Twentieth-Century American Politics". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 54 (3): 210–229.
9. Phillips; The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 287
10. Langsdon, Phillip (2000). Tennessee: A Political History. Franklin, Tennessee: Hillsboro Press. pp. 287–295.
11. Reichard, Gary W. (February 1970). "The Aberration of 1920: An Analysis of Harding's Victory in Tennessee". The Journal of Southern History. 36 (1): 33–49. doi:10.2307/2206601. JSTOR 2206601.
12. Larson, Edward J. (October 3, 2006). Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465075102.
13. Majors, William R. (1986). Change and continuity: Tennessee politics since the Civil War. Mercer University Press. p. 72. ISBN 9780865542099.
14. Guthrie, Paul Daniel (1955). The Dixiecrat Movement of 1948 (Thesis). Bowling Green State University. pp. 181–182. Docket 144207.
15. Langsdon, Phillip Royal (2000). Tennessee: A Political History. Franklin, Tennessee: Hillsboro Press. pp. 336–343. ISBN 9781577361251.
16. ^ Ogden, Frederic D. (1958). The poll tax in the South. University of Alabama Press. p. 193.
17. Ogden, The poll tax in the South, pp. 97-99
18. Mayer, Michael S. (2009). The Eisenhower Years. Infobase. p. 767. ISBN 978-1438119083.
19. Cornell, Douglas B. (September 17, 1952). "Ike Given 50–50 Chance To Break into Solid South". Lansing State Journal. Lansing, Michigan. pp. 7, 16.
20. Cornell, Douglas B. (October 24, 1952). "Most Southern States Continue to Back Demos Despite Sizeable Republican Inroads — GOP Has Even Chance to Carry Virginia, Texas, Florida". Lubbock Morning Avalanche. Lubbock, Texas. p. 11.
21. "US Poll Shows — Eisenhower Leading Stevenson in Electoral Votes, but Governor Has More States in His Column". The Greeneville Sun. Greeneville, Tennessee. Princeton Research Service. October 25, 1952. pp. 1, 8.
22. "NY Times Survey Indicates Close Election Tuesday". The Modesto Bee. Modesto, California. October 27, 1952. p. 8.
23. "The Importance of You". The Commercial Appeal. Memphis, Tennessee. October 31, 1952. p. 6.
24. ^ "TN US President, November 04, 1952". Our Campaigns.
25. Menendez, Albert J. (2005). The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004. McFarland. pp. 298–303. ISBN 0786422173.
26. Strong, Donald S. (August 1955). "The Presidential Election in the South, 1952". The Journal of Politics. 17 (3). The University of Chicago Press: 343–389. doi:10.1017/S0022381600091064.

v t e State and district results of the 1952 United States presidential election
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• 1952 United States presidential election by state
• United States presidential elections in Tennessee
• 1952 Tennessee elections