Who voted Republican in the Solid South?

[DC Al Fine]

Back in the days of the Solid South, the Democratic primary was often considered the real election, so much so that the Democratic candidate often ran unopposed. However, if you take a look at old congressional results before 1960 or so, there would sometimes be a GOP candidate in places like Texas or Mississippi, getting 5-20% of the vote.

Who was voting for these candidates? I'm not talking about, ancestral Republican areas, or a growing GOP-leaning suburbs. I wan to know who was voting GOP in your typical safe Democrat Southern seat in the 40's or 50's.

Was it blacks? Progressives? People who had a grudge against their local rep for whatever reason?

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Some of them were probably northern transplants.  Others might have been supporters of civil rights.

[Nyvin]

The select few small/medium business owners who liked the Republicans Laissez Faire approach?

Texas probably would've had a good number of those.

[ag]

Blacks (the few who could), (offspring of) carpetbaggers and scalawags and more recent transplants and other outcasts/contrarians, patronage employees of Republican administrations (with families), those who tried to play some role in Republican party politics nationwide (remember: they may have been hopeless outsiders in an election, but they still played a role in the RNC).

I mean, the numbers were tiny. Coolidge got

1,123 votes in SC
8,494 votes in MS
24,670 votes in LA
30,300 votes in GA
40,516 votes in AL
130,023 votes in TX

If in four of these they almost look like respectable percentages (over 20% in some cases) of votes cast, it is only because so few people, in fact, voted in the general election in any case. Census numbers for 1920 show the following populations

1,683,724 residents in SC
1,790,618 residents in MS
1,798,509 residents in LA
2,895,832 residents in GA
2,348,174 residents in AL
4,663,228 residents in TX

Even accounting for those not eligible to vote, these are ridiculous numbers (and ridiculous overall turnouts, BTW)

[RINO Tom]

Some of them were probably northern transplants.  Others might have been supporters of civil rights.

I can't comment that far back, but I know by at least the 1940s and 1950s, Southern Republicans were mostly in agreement with Southern Democrats on civil rights; their main campaign issues were arguing against one-party rule and moving the South in a more industrialized direction, IIRC.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Some of them were probably northern transplants.  Others might have been supporters of civil rights.

I can't comment that far back, but I know by at least the 1940s and 1950s, Southern Republicans were mostly in agreement with Southern Democrats on civil rights; their main campaign issues were arguing against one-party rule and moving the South in a more industrialized direction, IIRC.

Really?  I didn't know that.

I was thinking more of 1920s.

[ag]

Some of them were probably northern transplants.  Others might have been supporters of civil rights.

I can't comment that far back, but I know by at least the 1940s and 1950s, Southern Republicans were mostly in agreement with Southern Democrats on civil rights; their main campaign issues were arguing against one-party rule and moving the South in a more industrialized direction, IIRC.

You are right about most Southern White Republicans. Obviously, people like the MLK family (as black Atlanta elite, they, actually, voted, and, generally, voted Republican) did not share in that agreement

[RI]

German immigrants in the South were very Republican. Kendall/Gillespie Counties in TX were good examples of that.

[Storebought]

Southern Republicans civil rights supporters! What a laugh!

Republicans in the post 1920s South were merchants and mid-sized business owners who often ran well to the right of their Dixiecrat opponents especially on the New Deal (that was the cause of their unpopularity btw) and local tax policy. During the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, in statewide and congressional elections particularly in VA and the Deep South, GOP candidates adopted segregationist platforms as well.

[ag]

German immigrants in the South were very Republican. Kendall/Gillespie Counties in TX were good examples of that.

Well, some of that goes to the Civil War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treue_der_Union_Monument

[Thunderbird is the word]

Southern Republicans civil rights supporters! What a laugh!

Republicans in the post 1920s South were merchants and mid-sized business owners who often ran well to the right of their Dixiecrat opponents especially on the New Deal (that was the cause of their unpopularity btw) and local tax policy. During the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, in statewide and congressional elections particularly in VA and the Deep South, GOP candidates adopted segregationist platforms as well.

It could be that the New Deal simultaneously delayed the region's shift in terms of party alignement if you look at the shift in favor of Hoover in the 1928 election and planted the seeds of it's inevitability at the same time by bringing African-Americans and Labor into the Democratic tent wholesale.

[Indy Texas]

1. Northern transplants or their immediate descendants. (Usually they were wealthy investors who had come to the South to own farmland or timberland or natural resources.)

2. Residents of a region that voted Republican for historical reasons - East Tennessee, northern Alabama, northern Georgia, western North Carolina, northwestern Arkansas and central/west Texas.

3. People who were a part of the Republican Party patronage system. This was a small number of business elites and political operatives who, while they had no hope of electoral success in their states, could expect to receive appointments to positions in a Republican presidential administration.

4. Pre-1930s: The handful of blacks who somehow managed to jump through all of the Jim Crow loopholes and retain their franchise.

5. Beginning in the 1940s, economic conservatives (mainly wealthy business owners) who opposed the New Deal and felt the Democrats were no longer conservative enough.

6. During and after World War II, members of the military who were stationed in the South.