Dixiecrat
The States ' Rights Democratic Party, whose members are commonly Dixiecrats ( dt: Dixiekraten ) will be called, is a former U.S. political party. Top candidate, current Thurmond took part in the presidential elections in 1948 and won 39 electoral votes. Then the Dixiecrats broke up.
History
The southern states had until 1948 been a stronghold of the Democratic Party (Solid South ). In 1948, Democratic President Harry S. Truman decided extensive measures against racial segregation. This evaluated the Southern States as a taboo. The local Democrats seceded and formed the States ' Rights Democratic Party. In its nine-point party program they went for maximum self-government of the citizens and strict racial segregation " for the benefit of the South " a. The Democratic and Republican parties were explicitly denounced as " totalitarian, bureaucratic police Staters ".
For its members, the name Dixiecrat naturalized a fast, a portmanteau of the words Dixie for a U.S. Southerners and Democrats ( supporters of the Democratic Party).
Presidential Election 1948
Main article: Presidential election in the United States in 1948
Thurmond With top candidate current, the Dixiecrats presented the presidential elections of 1948., You were only in about half the states and renounced in several northern states (Michigan, Minnesota, New York, etc.) or states with few electoral votes (Iowa, Montana, Nevada, etc.) entirely on an election campaign. Only in 17 of the then 48 states, the party received votes.
The Dixiecrats won nationwide 2.4% of the vote. Nevertheless, she won a total of 38 of the 531 electors (7.2% ) because they reached the relative majority of votes in the solid South states of Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, respectively, the absolute majority of votes and in Louisiana. Since fall to the candidate with the relative majority according to the election law, all electors, the high number of electors showed. Later, a choice man in the Democrat from Tennessee voted against his party line for Thurmond ( " faithless elector " ), which earned him the 39th vote.
In other states could Thurmond retract any great success. It could, for example, in Arkansas and Georgia regional high proportion of votes won, but counted on the entire state of the Dixiecrats came nowhere with 20.3 % of the vote out.
After 1948
The Dixiecrats dissolved their party after the election in 1948. Thurmond and other higher-ranking SRDP politicians went back to the Democrats; others tried their luck in splinter parties such as the American Independent Party. Though not their party existed movement of Dixiecrats remained significant. Because the Democrats drifted further and further from their point of view to the left, they voted increasingly for the Republican Party. Strom Thurmond in 1964, a Republican; For several decades, the Solid South is considered Republican stronghold. The last time that the four states where the Dixiecrats won in 1948, all of them went to the Democrats, was the election of 1976.