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A lot of attention is paid to third party candidacies of George Wallace in the 60's. He was noted for his support for segregation, and more traditional Democrat labor politics afaik. But I haven't seen much focus on the earlier candidacies of Strom Thurmond in 1948. In OTL he and the "states rights Democratic Party" got primary Democrat ballot access in several Southern States, and third party status in other states.
Basically I'm curious about what would have happened if Thurmond and the other Southern Democrats had succeeded in preventing anyone from getting to the 266 electoral votes necessary to win the Presidency. As was the intent with the later Wallace campaigns, the hope was to extract concessions from one of the two big party candidates in exchange for support. What would the effect of this scenario coming to pass? Could we see some kind of protection for segregation on a federal level until a SC case overturns it? How would this affect the later Civil Rights efforts of the Johnson administration? Perhaps more importantly, if this strategy works early on, would the Dixiecrats try to repeat it down the line as Civil Rights becomes more of a hot button issue.
As for how to accomplish this scenario the only way I see it working is for more Southern States to given the sole Democrat ballot access to Thurmond, and exclude Truman. In OTL the party bosses in Tennessee prevented this, perhaps they could be persuaded? Texas also had a strong minority of Thurmond support, up to 30% in some eastern counties. If the states of Tennessee, Georgia, and Texas flip to Thurmond that's enough to take Truman below 266, and send the election to the Congress.