United States presidential election in Alabama, 1956
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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 The 1956 United States presidential election was the 43rd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1956. President Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully ran for reelection against Adlai Stevenson II, the former Illinois ...
. Alabama voters chose eleven 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 Poor White is a sociocultural classification used to describe economically disadvantaged Whites in the English-speaking world, especially White Americans with low incomes. In the United States, Poor White (or Poor Whites of the South for ...
via poll taxes, literacy tests and informal harassment had essentially eliminated opposition parties outside of Unionist
Winston County Winston County is the name of two counties in the United States: * Winston County, Alabama Winston County is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 23,540. Its county seat is Double Springs. Known as H ...
and presidential campaigns in a few nearby
northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ra ...
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, 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 The Republican National Convention (RNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1856 by the United States Republican Party. They are administered by the Republican National Committee. The goal of the Repu ...
serving in 1920. Nevertheless, Republicans only briefly gained from their hard lily-white policy by exceeding forty percent in three 1920 House of Representatives races, and in the 1928 presidential election when
Senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
James Thomas Heflin James Thomas Heflin (April 9, 1869 – April 22, 1951), nicknamed "Cotton Tom", was an American politician who served as a United States representative and United States senator from Alabama. Early life Born in Louina, Alabama, he attended t ...
embarked on a nationwide speaking tour, partially funded by the Ku Klux Klan, against Roman Catholic Democratic nominee
Al Smith Alfred Emanuel Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was an American politician who served four terms as Governor of New York and was the Democratic Party's candidate for president in 1928. The son of an Irish-American mother and a C ...
, 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 Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
, seeking a strategy to win the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
against the radically egalitarian rhetoric of Communism, 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. Truman was entirely excluded from the Alabama ballot, and Alabama’s electoral votes went to
Strom Thurmond James Strom Thurmond Sr. (December 5, 1902June 26, 2003) was an American politician who represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 to 2003. Prior to his 48 years as a senator, he served as the 103rd governor of South Caro ...
— 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. 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 despite signing the statutes. 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.


Polls


Results


Results by county


Analysis

As expected by the polls, Alabama voted for the Democratic nominees Adlai Stevenson II and running mate Tennessee Senator
Estes Kefauver Carey Estes Kefauver (; July 26, 1903 – August 10, 1963) was an American politician from Tennessee. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1939 to 1949 and in the Senate from 1949 until his d ...
, 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. 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 Walter Beaman Jones Jr. (February 10, 1943 – February 10, 2019) was an American politician who served twelve terms in the United States House of Representatives as a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party for from 19 ...
. , this is the last election in which Macon County voted for a Republican nominee, and the only election since Reconstruction that this majority-black county has voted Republican. It is also the last time that Houston County voted for a Democratic nominee,Sullivan, Robert David
‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’
''America Magazine'' in ''The National Catholic Review''; June 29, 2016.
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

*
United States presidential elections in Alabama Following is a table of United States presidential elections in Alabama, ordered by year. Since its admission to statehood in 1819, Alabama has participated in every U.S. presidential election except the election of 1864, during the American Civil ...


Notes


References

{{State results of the 1956 U.S. presidential election Alabama
1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim ...
1956 Alabama elections