In contrast to Herbert Hoover's anti-Catholicism-driven victory in the state in 1928, Eisenhower's victory was entirely concentrated in the newer and more liberal South Florida counties, which had seen extensive Northern settlement since the war, did not have a history of slave-based plantation farming,[3] and saw Eisenhower as more favourable to business than the Democratic Party.[4] Eisenhower swept the urban areas of Miami, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Sarasota and Tampa, but failed to gain much support in the northwestern pineywoods that had been the core of the 1928 "Hoovercrat" bolt. In this region – inhabited by socially exceptionally conservative poor whites who had been voting in increasing numbers since Florida abolished its poll tax – Democratic loyalties dating from the Civil War remained extremely strong and economic populism hostile in general toward urban areas kept voters loyal to Stevenson.[5] Whereas the urban voters who turned to Eisenhower felt wholly disfranchised both locally and nationally by the one-party system and malapportionment, rural poor voters supported the New Deal/Fair Dealstatus quo.[6]
In contrast to the wholly Deep South states of Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina, where former Thurmond voters turned to Eisenhower,[7] Florida – although akin to those states in entirely lacking traditional Appalachian, Ozark or German "Forty-Eighter" Republicanism[3] – did not see its 1948Dixiecrat voters or black belt whites turn over to Eisenhower on a large scale, and they were less loyal than in North Carolina, Texas and Virginia, where traditional Republicanism did exist. Florida's Southern Democrat political culture was strong enough that they were the only state that the Southern candidate Richard Russell won in the 1952 Democratic primaries.
Eisenhower's victory was the first of three consecutive Republican victories in the state, as Florida would not vote Democratic again until Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964. As of the 2024 presidential election[update], this is the last election in which Collier County voted for a Democratic presidential candidate.[8]
A campaign banner overhanging a street in Key West in support of Adlai Stevenson.
↑ These votes were listed in America at the Polls state-wide, but not in Dave Leip's Atlas.
↑ These write-in votes were given only as a state-wide total, not separated by county.
References
↑ "U.S. presidential election, 1952". Facts on File. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved October 24, 2013. Eisenhower, born in Texas, considered a resident of New York, and headquartered at the time in Paris, finally decided to run for the Republican nomination
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