Can anyone explain Mississippi's weird results from 1956-1964?

[HockeyDude]

1956:
Stevenson: 58
Eisenhower: 24
Unpledged?: 17

1960:
Unpledged?: 39
Kennedy: 34
Nixon: 25

1964:
Goldwater: 87!?
Johnson: 12

So... how exactly did MS run it's elections for there to be unpledged electors on the ballot, and why did the voters vote for something that would make no difference?  (protest vote?).  And how the hell did Goldwater manage 87% in the state when Johnson won in the biggest landslide in modern history?  I know the Deep South was Goldwater's base and all... but other Southern whites seemed OK enough with Johnson (a Southerner) that Goldwater wasn't racking up such ridiculous numbers. 

It just seems like the rest of the country was "normal" in a way... and for every election over 12 years Mississippi went off on a tangent all by itself. 

[I Can't Get That Sound You Make, Out Of My Head]

Racism.

[Rockefeller]

Decades of Northern Aggression.

[Senator Napoleon]

Decades of Northern Aggression.

Bahahahhahaha

[LINCOLN REPUBLICAN]

Sending a message to DC.

1956 Democrat Stevenson.  A Republican was in office.

1960 Unpledged.  A curse on both your houses.

1964 Republican Goldwater.  A Democrat was in office.

[shua]

The unpledged vote meant that if MS was needed for a candidate to win the electoral college, they wouldn't get it. Then, either a candidate makes a deal with the electors to get their vote, or it  goes to the House and some sort of deal or a better candidate is selected.  So a protest vote, but not impossible that it would make a difference.


One thing to keep in mind is that MS had the lowest voter participation of any state at that time (25% in 1960).
And that's not just because people weren't interested in voting. In some ways democracy is a recent development in the Deep South.  The political tradition was more unified than in neighboring states with more upland areas (eg.  AL, where you had pro-Unionists in the hill country during the Civil War).

[Ebowed]

Decades of Northern Aggression.

Yes, if it weren't for 'Northern Aggression', maybe Mississippi wouldn't have had to perform all of those lynchings.

[A cowboy always follows his beard]

Racism.

You beat me to it!

[Lloyd Bentsen's Ghost]

In MS at that time, your presidential ballot didn't simply have the candidates on it. Instead, you had to vote for a slate of electors who were intending to support a candidate. So instead of voting for Dwight Eisenhower or Adlai Stevenson, you would either vote for electors pledged to vote for Eisenhower, electors pledged to vote for Stevenson, or electors who were unpledged.

As to why they picked unpledged electors? Disagreement with the Eisenhower administration over its use of federal power to force school districts to comply with the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, the Democrats' selection of a northern, liberal pro-civil rights candidate, racism.

[A cowboy always follows his beard]

the biggest landslide in modern history

[True Federalist]

the biggest landslide in modern history

While the electoral vote margins in 1972 and 1984 are greater than what Johnson got in 1964, Johnson's 61.05% of the popular vote in 1964  is the largest share of the popular vote anyone has gotten since Monroe got 80.6% in an essentially unopposed 1820 election.

[shua]

Where did you get the 1820 popular vote figure TF?

[HockeyDude]

Thanks for the answers... I knew racism had something to do with it, but had no idea about the actual MS election process.  

Still find it fascinating that in 1964 MS voters (who I'm assuming were all white), were SO homogenous.  

EDIT: then again, checking the 2008 exit poll, whites in MS went 88-11 McCain.  LA and AL are similar, and outside of those 3 it seems to normalize to a degree.  This is 2008 for god's sake, that's just unbelievable. 

[Proud Lieberal from Northeast]

Decades of Northern Aggression.

I really hope it was nothing more than a failed irony attempt.

[True Federalist]

Where did you get the 1820 popular vote figure TF?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1820

Altho technically, that's the vote share for Republican electors, not for Monroe himself.  Here's a weird fact.  The Federalist electors won in Massachusetts, but they voted for Monroe as well.

[Senator Snowstalker]

And that's not just because people weren't interested in voting. In some ways democracy is a recent development in the Deep South.  The political tradition was more unified than in neighboring states with more upland areas (eg.  AL, where you had pro-Unionists in the hill country during the Civil War).

Also because blacks were effectively barred from voting.

[Gravis Marketing]

Sending a message to DC.

1964 Republican Goldwater.  A Democrat was in office.

Mm-hmm.

[Harry]

Before the 24th amendment, blacks essentially were not allowed to vote at all.

[Vasall des Midas]

The unpledged vote meant that if MS was needed for a candidate to win the electoral college, they wouldn't get it.

It meant that if the Democrats needed Mississippi (and the same thing was tried in Louisiana too but the unpledged slate didn't win) the civil rights plank of their platform had to be retracted. That is all. It was not available to Nixon.

[A cowboy always follows his beard]

Before the 24th amendment, blacks essentially were not allowed to vote at all.

In the South, that is.

[cope1989]

Thanks for the answers... I knew racism had something to do with it, but had no idea about the actual MS election process.  

Still find it fascinating that in 1964 MS voters (who I'm assuming were all white), were SO homogenous.  

EDIT: then again, checking the 2008 exit poll, whites in MS went 88-11 McCain.  LA and AL are similar, and outside of those 3 it seems to normalize to a degree.  This is 2008 for god's sake, that's just unbelievable. 

Yeah, it's pretty despicable. I mean, you could argue against the racist angle and say that whites in the deep south just happen to be overehelmingly conservative, but even that doesn't justify close to 90% of whites voting Republican when the vote is much more split in almost every other state. Even whites in Utah gave Obama more support.

So when you examine the facts you realize that racial politics still exist in the south in a big way. 1964 was just the first election that began to turn the "solid south" the other way.

[freepcrusher]

the white vote exit polls are wrong in some states. Evidence suggests that while McCain obviously won whites by a huge margin in the south, it wasn't by as much. From what I see in the south he got:

73% in Texas
72% in Oklahoma
no partisan data for Arkansas
79% in Louisiana
82% in Mississippi
77% in Alabama
58% in Florida
72% in Georgia
69% in South Carolina
61% in North Carolina
67% in Tennessee
no partisan data for Kentucky or West Virginia
59% in Virginia
56% in Maryland
46% in Delaware

[cope1989]

the white vote exit polls are wrong in some states. Evidence suggests that while McCain obviously won whites by a huge margin in the south, it wasn't by as much. From what I see in the south he got:

73% in Texas
72% in Oklahoma
no partisan data for Arkansas
79% in Louisiana
82% in Mississippi
77% in Alabama
58% in Florida
72% in Georgia
69% in South Carolina
61% in North Carolina
67% in Tennessee
no partisan data for Kentucky or West Virginia
59% in Virginia
56% in Maryland
46% in Delaware

How did you determine that data?

[freepcrusher]

the white vote exit polls are wrong in some states. Evidence suggests that while McCain obviously won whites by a huge margin in the south, it wasn't by as much. From what I see in the south he got:

73% in Texas
72% in Oklahoma
no partisan data for Arkansas
79% in Louisiana
82% in Mississippi
77% in Alabama
58% in Florida
72% in Georgia
69% in South Carolina
61% in North Carolina
67% in Tennessee
no partisan data for Kentucky or West Virginia
59% in Virginia
56% in Maryland
46% in Delaware

How did you determine that data?

Dave's Redistricting App. You can see my thread about it below:
http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=154691.0

[realisticidealist]

the white vote exit polls are wrong in some states. Evidence suggests that while McCain obviously won whites by a huge margin in the south, it wasn't by as much. From what I see in the south he got:

73% in Texas
72% in Oklahoma
no partisan data for Arkansas
79% in Louisiana
82% in Mississippi
77% in Alabama
58% in Florida
72% in Georgia
69% in South Carolina
61% in North Carolina
67% in Tennessee
no partisan data for Kentucky or West Virginia
59% in Virginia
56% in Maryland
46% in Delaware

How did you determine that data?

Dave's Redistricting App. You can see my thread about it below:
http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=154691.0

That wouldn't take into account racial turnout differentials or behavior of localized 'minoritied' groups (that is, whites in heavily black areas or blacks in heavily white areas) which evidence suggests vote differently than those in areas where they're a supermajority. While you'd get relatively close, I'd take those numbers with a grain of salt.