1960 United States presidential election in South Carolina
election in South Carolina
The 1960 United States presidential election in South Carolina took place on November 8, 1960, as part of the 1960 United States presidential election. South Carolina voters chose eight representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
For six decades up to 1950 South Carolina was a one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party. The Republican Party had been moribund due to the disfranchisement of blacks and the complete absence of other support bases as South Carolina completely lacked upland or German refugee whites opposed to secession. Between 1900 and 1948, no Republican presidential candidate ever obtained more than seven percent of the total presidential vote – a vote which in 1924 reached as low as 6.6 percent of the total voting-age population (or approximately 15 percent of the voting-age white population).
Following Harry S. Truman's To Secure These Rights in 1947, the following year South Carolina's small electorate overwhelmingly rejected him in favour of state Governor Strom Thurmond, who won 71 percent of the state's limited electorate and every county except poor white industrial Anderson and Spartanburg. During the 1950s, the state's wealthier and more urbanized whites became extremely disenchanted with the national Democratic Party and to a lesser extent with the federal administration of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. However, the state's abolition of its poll tax in 1950 allowed increasing white voter registration and the poor white upcountry provided enough support to national Democrat Adlai Stevenson II to keep the state Democratic in the 1952 and 1956 elections, aided by substantial majorities amongst the small but increasing number of blacks able to vote.
During the 1950s, wealthy textile mill owners in the upcountry developed a grassroots state Republican Party dedicated to the tenets of the John Birch Society. This group nominated the most conservative delegation at the party's 1960 convention.
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