Virginia Goes Republican--in 1948

Dewey came fairly close to carrying VA in 1948. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Virginia,_1948 The Crossley poll had predicted he would win it--that might be one reason he didn't talk more about civil rights during his campaign. (Both Dewey and his campaign manager Herbert Brownell later denied this, however, and it may be that Dewey's reluctance to talk about civil rights was simply part of his more general reluctance to discuss substantive issues--because, after all, he was leading in the polls, so why not play it safe?...)

Perhaps VA is one of the few states that Dewey lost in 1948 that Taft could have carried--especially if Harry Byrd's machine would have tacitly backed him the way it backed Republican presidential candidates from 1952 on. (But even if Taft had carried VA and his own OH, that wouldn't have been enough to win, especially since he would almost certainly have lost NY, which had 47 electoral votes in those days, and which Dewey only very narrowly won. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_New_York,_1948)
 
If Dewey wins Virginia in '48, it'd be in the context of a fairly broad win nationally, if not a landslide. If you're asking what the specific implication of a win there would be for him, I'm not sure - as you note in the OP, Virginia was probably going to start trending Republican regardless, be it in 1948, 1952 or later.
 
If Dewey wins Virginia in '48, it'd be in the context of a fairly broad win nationally, if not a landslide. If you're asking what the specific implication of a win there would be for him, I'm not sure - as you note in the OP, Virginia was probably going to start trending Republican regardless, be it in 1948, 1952 or later.

True, Dewey could probably not have carried VA without doing sufficiently well nationwide that he would win without it. But that would not necessarily be true of Taft, and my subject was "Virginia Goes Republican--in 1948" which is not *necessarily* synonymous with "Virginia Goes for Dewey in 1948." Besides, maybe Byrd decides that even Dewey is a lesser evil than Truman...
 
True, Dewey could probably not have carried VA without doing sufficiently well nationwide that he would win without it. But that would not necessarily be true of Taft, and my subject was "Virginia Goes Republican--in 1948" which is not *necessarily* synonymous with "Virginia Goes for Dewey in 1948." Besides, maybe Byrd decides that even Dewey is a lesser evil than Truman...

Are you asking if National observers would find this to be a particularly strange occurrence? Because Virginia had gone to the GOP in the last Republican victory at that point, 1928 (albeit in a massive Republican landslide), so it's not like it would've been perceived as coming out of left field...
 
Are you asking if National observers would find this to be a particularly strange occurrence? Because Virginia had gone to the GOP in the last Republican victory at that point, 1928 (albeit in a massive Republican landslide), so it's not like it would've been perceived as coming out of left field...

Yes, but *Alabama* almost went for Hoover against Smith in 1928! The GOP showing in the South in 1928 was widely regarded as a one-time thing.
 
Yes, but *Alabama* almost went for Hoover against Smith in 1928! The GOP showing in the South in 1928 was widely regarded as a one-time thing.

Yeah but there were specific, repeatable reasons why Hoover made such deep inroads into the South- he used a prototype of Nixon's Southern Strategy with tactics such as:

Purging black Republicans from leadership positions in the southern wing of the G.O.P. and replacing them with respectable, business-oriented southern whites.

And running against the Catholic Smith made it all the easier.

This source goes into more detail: http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8734&context=annals-of-iowa

If Dewey can follow the Hoover playbook and make a deal with Thurmond and the Dixiecrats then a bunch of the South would be in play for him. Problem is that in 48 there were still enough progressive/liberal Republicans left that such a deal would turn them off big time and flip a bunch of northern states to Truman.
 
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