1956 United States presidential election in Alabama
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 County results
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| Elections in Alabama |
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The 1956 United States presidential election in Alabama took place on November 6, 1956, as part of the 1956 United States presidential election. Alabama voters chose eleven[3] representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. In Alabama, voters voted for electors individually instead of as a slate, as in the other states.
Since the 1890s, Alabama had been effectively a one-party state ruled by the Democratic Party. Disenfranchisement of almost all African-Americans and a large proportion of poor whites via poll taxes, literacy tests[4] and informal harassment had essentially eliminated opposition parties outside of Unionist Winston County and presidential campaigns in a few nearby northern hill counties. The only competitive statewide elections during this period were thus Democratic Party primaries — limited to white voters until the landmark court case of Smith v. Allwright, following which Alabama introduced the Boswell Amendment — ruled unconstitutional in Davis v. Schnell in 1949,[5] although substantial increases in black voter registration would not occur until after the late 1960s Voting Rights Act.
Unlike other Deep South states, the state GOP would after disenfranchisement rapidly and permanently turn “lily-white”, with the last black delegates at any Republican National Convention serving in 1920.[6] Nevertheless, Republicans only briefly gained from their hard lily-white policy by exceeding forty percent in three 1920 House of Representatives races,[7] and in the 1928 presidential election when Senator James Thomas Heflin embarked on a nationwide speaking tour, partially funded by the Ku Klux Klan, against Roman Catholic Democratic nominee Al Smith,[8] so that Republican Herbert Hoover lost by only seven thousand votes.
Following Smith, Alabama’s loyalty to the national Democratic Party would be broken when Harry S. Truman, seeking a strategy to win the Cold War against the radically egalitarian rhetoric of Communism,[9] launched the first Civil Rights bill since Reconstruction. Southern Democrats became enraged and for the 1948 presidential election, Alabama’s Democratic presidential elector primary chose electors who were pledged to not vote for incumbent President Truman.[10] Truman was entirely excluded from the Alabama ballot,[11] and Alabama’s electoral votes went to Strom Thurmond — labelled as the “Democratic” nominee — by a margin only slightly smaller than Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four victories. Despite this, in 1950 loyalists regained control of the ruling party and few would support Republican nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election.[12]
In the four ensuing years, Alabama’s ruling elite was jolted by the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which ruled unconstitutional the de jure segregated school system in the South. The state attempted to use the doctrine of “interposition” to place its sovereignty above the Court and maintain de jure segregation, although incumbent Governor Jim Folsom viewed the idea as futile[13] despite signing the statutes.[14] The state would also be affected by the Montgomery bus boycott, and as a result an independent elector slate, not pledged to any candidate, would be nominated.[15]
Polls
[edit]| Source | Ranking | As of |
|---|---|---|
| The Philadelphia Inquirer[16] | Safe D | October 26, 1956 |
| The Sunday Star[17] | Safe D | October 28, 1956 |
| The Birmingham News[18] | Likely D | November 4, 1956 |
| Chattanooga Daily Times[19] | Likely D | November 4, 1956 |
Results
[edit]| Party | Pledged to | Elector | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | Jasse Brown | 280,844 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | J. E. Brantley | 280,549 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | H. Tom Cochran | 280,366 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | William M. Kelly, Jr. | 280,159 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | Lawrence E. McNeil | 279,999 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | Ben F. Ray | 279,878 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | Wilma K. Butts | 279,811 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | Henry H. Sweet | 279,774 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | Wesley Winchell Acee, Jr. | 279,542 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II[c] | W. F. Turner | 279,484 | |
| Democratic Party | Adlai Stevenson II | H. Floyd Sherrod | 279,398 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | William H. Albritton | 195,694 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | Herman E. Dean, Jr. | 195,200 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | Charles H. Chapman, Jr. | 195,175 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | Robert M. Guthrie | 195,012 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | Neil Morgan | 194,991 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | W. M. Russell | 194,898 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | George Stiefelmeyer | 194,708 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | I. L. Smith, Jr. | 194,699 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | R. S. Cartledge | 194,687 | |
| Republican Party | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | Thomas G. McNaron | 194,629 | |
| Republican Party (i | Dwight D. Eisenhower (incumbent) | George Witcher | 194,014 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | Thomas Bellsnyder, Jr. | 20,323 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | Russell Carter | 20,279 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | Tom C. King | 20,271 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | M. L. Griffin | 20,210 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | Jack S. Riley | 20,149 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | Edwin T. Parker | 20,112 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | J. S. Payne | 20,111 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | John Frederick Duggar, III | 20,082 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | Joseph S. Mead | 20,081 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | John C. Eagerton, III | 20,027 | |
| Independent | Unpledged | Llewellyn Duggar | 19,971 | |
| Write-in | Ace Carter | 8 | ||
| Write-in | Jim Sherrill | 2 | ||
| Total votes | 496,871 | |||
Results by county
[edit]| County | Adlai Stevenson Democratic |
Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican |
Unpledged electors Independent |
Margin | Total votes cast | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | ||
| Autauga | 1,161 | 50.77% | 857 | 37.47% | 269 | 11.76% | 304 | 13.30% | 2,287 |
| Baldwin | 3,878 | 46.08% | 4,293 | 51.02% | 244 | 2.90% | -415 | -4.94% | 8,415 |
| Barbour | 2,530 | 73.35% | 777 | 22.53% | 142 | 4.12% | 1,753 | 50.82% | 3,449 |
| Bibb | 1,471 | 56.97% | 1,004 | 38.88% | 107 | 4.14% | 467 | 18.09% | 2,582 |
| Blount | 3,208 | 54.17% | 2,628 | 44.38% | 86 | 1.45% | 580 | 9.79% | 5,922 |
| Bullock | 812 | 64.86% | 304 | 24.28% | 136 | 10.86% | 508 | 40.58% | 1,252 |
| Butler | 1,958 | 55.42% | 1,324 | 37.48% | 251 | 7.10% | 634 | 17.94% | 3,533 |
| Calhoun | 9,069 | 65.24% | 4,473 | 32.18% | 358 | 2.58% | 4,596 | 33.06% | 13,900 |
| Chambers | 5,165 | 76.67% | 1,448 | 21.49% | 124 | 1.84% | 3,717 | 55.18% | 6,737 |
| Cherokee | 2,661 | 75.75% | 845 | 24.05% | 7 | 0.20% | 1,816 | 51.70% | 3,513 |
| Chilton | 1,891 | 36.73% | 3,139 | 60.98% | 118 | 2.29% | -1,248 | -24.25% | 5,148 |
| Choctaw | 1,250 | 70.26% | 457 | 25.69% | 72 | 4.05% | 793 | 44.57% | 1,779 |
| Clarke | 1,962 | 57.91% | 1,246 | 36.78% | 180 | 5.31% | 716 | 21.13% | 3,388 |
| Clay | 1,677 | 50.47% | 1,597 | 48.06% | 49 | 1.47% | 80 | 2.41% | 3,323 |
| Cleburne | 1,407 | 56.96% | 1,056 | 42.75% | 7 | 0.28% | 351 | 14.21% | 2,470 |
| Coffee | 4,163 | 79.02% | 973 | 18.47% | 132 | 2.51% | 3,190 | 60.55% | 5,268 |
| Colbert | 7,007 | 78.40% | 1,819 | 20.35% | 111 | 1.24% | 5,188 | 58.05% | 8,937 |
| Conecuh | 1,687 | 61.26% | 885 | 32.14% | 182 | 6.61% | 802 | 29.12% | 2,754 |
| Coosa | 1,411 | 56.01% | 1,070 | 42.48% | 38 | 1.51% | 341 | 13.53% | 2,519 |
| Covington | 4,887 | 65.25% | 2,257 | 30.13% | 346 | 4.62% | 2,630 | 35.12% | 7,490 |
| Crenshaw | 2,252 | 75.70% | 567 | 19.06% | 156 | 5.24% | 1,685 | 56.64% | 2,975 |
| Cullman | 5,510 | 55.49% | 4,381 | 44.12% | 38 | 0.38% | 1,129 | 11.37% | 9,929 |
| Dale | 2,318 | 62.45% | 1,284 | 34.59% | 110 | 2.96% | 1,034 | 27.86% | 3,712 |
| Dallas | 2,121 | 39.59% | 2,324 | 43.37% | 913 | 17.04% | -203 | -3.78% | 5,358 |
| DeKalb | 5,768 | 50.30% | 5,684 | 49.56% | 16 | 0.14% | 84 | 0.74% | 11,468 |
| Elmore | 3,353 | 62.16% | 1,619 | 30.01% | 422 | 7.82% | 1,734 | 32.15% | 5,394 |
| Escambia | 3,437 | 64.86% | 1,529 | 28.85% | 333 | 6.28% | 1,908 | 36.01% | 5,299 |
| Etowah | 12,374 | 62.22% | 7,198 | 36.20% | 314 | 1.58% | 5,176 | 26.02% | 19,886 |
| Fayette | 1,956 | 49.80% | 1,948 | 49.59% | 24 | 0.61% | 8 | 0.21% | 3,928 |
| Franklin | 3,354 | 49.55% | 3,399 | 50.21% | 16 | 0.24% | -45 | -0.66% | 6,769 |
| Geneva | 2,841 | 68.99% | 1,179 | 28.63% | 98 | 2.38% | 1,662 | 40.36% | 4,118 |
| Greene | 691 | 66.19% | 309 | 29.60% | 44 | 4.21% | 382 | 36.59% | 1,044 |
| Hale | 1,314 | 68.54% | 504 | 26.29% | 99 | 5.16% | 810 | 42.25% | 1,917 |
| Henry | 2,127 | 78.40% | 429 | 15.81% | 157 | 5.79% | 1,698 | 62.59% | 2,713 |
| Houston | 3,630 | 53.06% | 2,632 | 38.47% | 579 | 8.46% | 998 | 14.59% | 6,841 |
| Jackson | 4,758 | 71.58% | 1,868 | 28.10% | 21 | 0.32% | 2,890 | 43.48% | 6,647 |
| Jefferson | 38,604 | 44.11% | 43,695 | 49.93% | 5,214 | 5.96% | -5,091 | -5.82% | 87,513 |
| Lamar | 2,501 | 73.58% | 867 | 25.51% | 31 | 0.91% | 1,634 | 48.07% | 3,399 |
| Lauderdale | 9,150 | 78.26% | 2,458 | 21.02% | 84 | 0.72% | 6,692 | 57.24% | 11,692 |
| Lawrence | 2,961 | 70.75% | 1,197 | 28.60% | 27 | 0.65% | 1,764 | 42.15% | 4,185 |
| Lee | 3,302 | 65.37% | 1,586 | 31.40% | 163 | 3.23% | 1,716 | 33.97% | 5,051 |
| Limestone | 4,145 | 87.26% | 589 | 12.40% | 16 | 0.34% | 3,556 | 74.86% | 4,750 |
| Lowndes | 623 | 52.27% | 326 | 27.35% | 243 | 20.39% | 297 | 24.92% | 1,192 |
| Macon | 1,024 | 46.69% | 1,067 | 48.65% | 102 | 4.65% | -43 | -1.96% | 2,193 |
| Madison | 9,054 | 74.52% | 2,993 | 24.63% | 103 | 0.85% | 6,061 | 49.89% | 12,150 |
| Marengo | 1,858 | 60.88% | 1,009 | 33.06% | 185 | 6.06% | 849 | 27.82% | 3,052 |
| Marion | 2,849 | 52.67% | 2,536 | 46.88% | 24 | 0.44% | 313 | 5.79% | 5,409 |
| Marshall | 6,329 | 66.66% | 3,071 | 32.34% | 95 | 1.00% | 3,258 | 34.32% | 9,495 |
| Mobile | 17,163 | 43.41% | 20,639 | 52.21% | 1,732 | 4.38% | -3,476 | -8.80% | 39,534 |
| Monroe | 2,069 | 69.95% | 759 | 25.66% | 130 | 4.39% | 1,310 | 44.29% | 2,958 |
| Montgomery | 6,890 | 36.57% | 8,727 | 46.32% | 3,224 | 17.11% | -1,837 | -9.75% | 18,841 |
| Morgan | 7,671 | 70.56% | 2,974 | 27.35% | 227 | 2.09% | 4,697 | 43.21% | 10,872 |
| Perry | 974 | 53.75% | 613 | 33.83% | 225 | 12.42% | 361 | 19.92% | 1,812 |
| Pickens | 1,660 | 58.78% | 993 | 35.16% | 171 | 6.06% | 667 | 23.62% | 2,824 |
| Pike | 2,631 | 68.53% | 997 | 25.97% | 211 | 5.50% | 1,634 | 42.56% | 3,839 |
| Randolph | 3,151 | 66.18% | 1,584 | 33.27% | 26 | 0.55% | 1,567 | 32.91% | 4,761 |
| Russell | 3,060 | 68.32% | 1,265 | 28.24% | 154 | 3.44% | 1,795 | 40.08% | 4,479 |
| Shelby | 2,502 | 44.83% | 2,901 | 51.98% | 178 | 3.19% | -399 | -7.15% | 5,581 |
| St. Clair | 2,420 | 48.64% | 2,441 | 49.07% | 114 | 2.29% | -21 | -0.43% | 4,975 |
| Sumter | 981 | 58.71% | 578 | 34.59% | 112 | 6.70% | 403 | 24.12% | 1,671 |
| Talladega | 5,243 | 54.63% | 4,197 | 43.73% | 157 | 1.64% | 1,046 | 10.90% | 9,597 |
| Tallapoosa | 5,070 | 72.00% | 1,879 | 26.68% | 93 | 1.32% | 3,191 | 45.32% | 7,042 |
| Tuscaloosa | 8,186 | 59.33% | 4,994 | 36.19% | 618 | 4.48% | 3,192 | 23.14% | 13,798 |
| Walker | 7,661 | 59.30% | 5,179 | 40.09% | 79 | 0.61% | 2,482 | 19.21% | 12,919 |
| Washington | 1,705 | 66.37% | 777 | 30.25% | 87 | 3.39% | 928 | 36.12% | 2,569 |
| Wilcox | 778 | 52.78% | 499 | 33.85% | 197 | 13.36% | 279 | 18.93% | 1,474 |
| Winston | 1,570 | 34.35% | 2,998 | 65.60% | 2 | 0.04% | -1,428 | -31.25% | 4,570 |
| Totals | 280,844 | 56.52% | 195,694 | 39.39% | 20,323 | 4.09% | 85,150 | 17.13% | 496,871 |
Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican
[edit]Analysis
[edit]As expected by the polls, Alabama voted for the Democratic nominees Adlai Stevenson II and running mate Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, with 56.52 percent of the popular vote against Republican–nominees incumbent President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon, with 39.39 percent. Eisenhower’s performance was nonetheless the second-best by a Republican in Alabama since 1884, when many blacks were still enfranchised, while Stevenson declined by eight percent compared to his 1952 performance. Eisenhower’s main gains were in upper- and middle-class urban areas, where wealthier whites aligned strongly with GOP economic policies.[21] The unpledged slate had little support and consequently did not make the impact it did in South Carolina, Mississippi or Louisiana, cracking twenty percent only in Lowndes County.
Stevenson received ten of Alabama’s eleven electoral votes; the eleventh was cast by a faithless elector for Walter B. Jones.[22][23]
As of the 2020 presidential election[update], this is the last election in which Macon County voted for a Republican nominee, and the only election since 1872 that this majority-black county has voted Republican.[d] It is also the last time that Houston County voted for a Democratic nominee,[24] and the last time that the state has supported a losing Democratic nominee or that a Republican won two terms without ever carrying the state.
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ A faithless elector cast their vote for Alabama judge Walter Burgwyn Jones and former Georgia governor Herman Talmadge as vice president.
- ^ Although he was born in Texas and grew up in Kansas before his military career, at the time of the 1952 election Eisenhower was president of Columbia University and was, officially, a resident of New York. During his first term as president, he moved his private residence to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and officially changed his residency to Pennsylvania.
- ^ Faithless elector W. F. Turner voted for Walter Burgwyn Jones and Herman Talmadge.
- ^ This county also voted Republican in the Reconstruction Era elections of 1868 and 1872.
References
[edit]- ^ "United States Presidential election of 1956 — Encyclopædia Britannica". Retrieved June 10, 2017.
- ^ "The Presidents". David Leip. Retrieved September 27, 2017.
Eisenhower's home state for the 1956 Election was Pennsylvania
- ^ "1956 Election for the Forty-Fourth Term (1961-65)". Retrieved June 10, 2017.
- ^ Perman, Michael (2001). Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. p. Introduction.
- ^ Stanley, Harold Watkins (1987). Voter mobilization and the politics of race: the South and universal suffrage, 1952-1984. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 100. ISBN 0275926737.
- ^ Heersink, Boris; Jenkins, Jeffery A. (2020). Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968. Cambridge University Press. pp. 251–253. ISBN 9781107158436.
- ^ Phillips, Kevin P. (1969). The Emerging Republican Majority. Arlington House. p. 255. ISBN 0870000586.
- ^ Chiles, Robert (2018). The Revolution of '28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal. Cornell University Press. p. 115. ISBN 9781501705502.
- ^ Geselbracht, Raymond H., ed. (2007). The Civil Rights Legacy of Harry S. Truman. Truman State University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-1931112673.
- ^ Jenkins, Ray (2012). Blind Vengeance: The Roy Moody Mail Bomb Murders. University of Georgia Press. p. 38. ISBN 978-0820341019.
- ^ Key, V.O. junior; Southern Politics in State and Nation; p. 340 ISBN 087049435X
- ^ Perman, Michael (2009). Pursuit of Unity: A Political History of the American South. University of North Carolina Press. p. 274. ISBN 978-0807833247.
- ^ Weill, Susan (2002). In a madhouse's din: civil rights coverage by Mississippi's daily press, 1948-1968. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. pp. 76–77. ISBN 0275969606.
- ^ Rogers, Kim Lacy (1993). Righteous lives: narratives of the New Orleans civil rights movement. New York: New York University Press. p. 63. ISBN 0814774318.
- ^ Bartley, Numan V. (1976). Southern Politics and the Second Reconstruction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 87–91.
- ^ O‘Brien, John C. (October 27, 1956). ""Doubtful States" Seen for President by GOP". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia. p. 8.
- ^ Latimer, James (October 28, 1956). "Virginia". The Sunday Star. Washington, D.C. p. A-31.
- ^ Taylor, Fred (November 4, 1956). "On Tuesday's Vote — State Demos "Sure", Republicans "Hope"". The Birmingham News. Birmingham, Alabama. p. 1A, 4A.
- ^ Bartlett, Charles (November 4, 1956). "One Man's Guess: 384 Electoral Votes for Eisenhower". Chattanooga Daily Times. Chattanooga, Tennessee. p. 21.
- ^ Alabama Official and Statistical Register, 1963. Montgomery, Alabama: Walker Printing Co. 1963. pp. 607–610. Retrieved June 11, 2021.
- ^ Phillips. The Emerging Republican Majority pp. 221-222
- ^ "1956 Presidential General Election Results — Alabama". Retrieved June 10, 2017.
- ^ "The American Presidency Project – Election of 1956". Retrieved June 10, 2017.
- ^ Sullivan, Robert David; ‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016.
