1948 United States presidential election in Tennessee

The 1948 United States presidential election in Tennessee took place on November 2, 1948, as part of the 1948 United States presidential election. Tennessee voters chose 12^[2] representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

1948 United States presidential election in Tennessee

← 1944 November 2, 1948[1] 1952 →

Nominee Harry S. Truman Thomas E. Dewey Strom Thurmond Party Democratic Republican Dixiecrat Home state Missouri New York South Carolina Running mate Alben W. Barkley Earl Warren Fielding L. Wright Electoral vote 11 0 1 Popular vote 270,402 202,914 73,815 Percentage 49.14% 36.87% 13.41%

County results Truman   40–50%   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90% Dewey   40–50%   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90% Thurmond   40–50%   80–90%

President before election Harry S. Truman Democratic Elected President Harry S. Truman Democratic

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^[3] 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.^[4] 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.^[5] After the disfranchisement of the state's African-American population by a poll tax was largely complete in the 1890s,^[6] the Democratic Party was certain of winning statewide elections if united,^[7] 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.^[8] 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,^[9] 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,^[10] and in 1928 anti-Catholicism against Democratic nominee Al Smith gave this powerfully fundamentalist state to Herbert Hoover.^[11]

After the beginning of the Great Depression, however, for the next third of a century 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.^[12] State politics during the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by Edward Hull “Boss” Crump, whose Memphis political machine would consistently provide decisive votes in statewide Democratic primaries aided by cross-party voting by Republicans in eastern mountain counties.^[12] Although Tennessee’s delegates at the 1948 Democratic National Convention were all opposed to incumbent President Harry S. Truman after his proposal for black civil rights titled To Secure These Rights, the presence of potentially formidable Republican opposition in East Tennessee and the Highland Rim meant that Crump could not even keep his own machine in line.^[13] Governor McCord and even Crump’s long-time ally Senator Kenneth D. McKellar both broke with him over supporting States Rights Democratic nominees Strom Thurmond and Fielding L. Wright, with McCord losing the Democratic nomination to Crump foe Gordon Browning.^[14] In order to get their electors on the ballot the Dixiecrats had to form a separate state organisation in Somerville,^[13] although three of the Dixiecrat electors were simultaneously on the slate for Truman and Kentucky Senator Alben W. Barkley.^[15]

14% of white voters supported Thurmond.^[16]