The 1968 presidential election has always been an interest of mine and particularly the results in Mississippi. This was the third and final election in a 20-year period where Mississippi's electoral votes were taken by a third party ticket where a hardline conservative position on race was a major part of the platform. Awhile back I had posted the precinct returns for 8 different counties from the 1968 election in Mississippi. These counties are Hinds, Forrest, Washington, Pike, Scott, Yazoo, Attala, and Carroll. One of the questions I was trying to answer was who supported Nixon as Mississippi was his worst state. Black voters (newly enfranchised after the VRA) would overwhelmingly vote for the Democrat Hubert Humphrey and white voters strongly supported the independent George Wallace because of his opposition to civil rights. This limited Nixon's appeal. You can find the spreadsheet I was working with here. It includes the 1968 returns from 258 Mississippi precincts.
I have divided the 258 precincts into three categories: city, town, and country. City precincts are all precincts within a place that had 25,000+ people by the 1970 census. This includes Jackson, Hattiesburg, and Greenville. Town precincts are all precincts in a place with more than 4,000 people in 1970 but less than 25,000. This includes places like Clinton, Kosciusko, and Forest. Country precincts are all precincts in places with less than 4,000 people.
Things to consider
1) my main theory going into this was that whites in integrated neighborhoods or areas would be most likely to support Wallace and least likely to support Nixon. They would feel more threatened by the civil rights movement and want to support Wallace is my thinking. This idea will be featured heavily throughout the rest of this post.
2) Lyndon Johnson lost Mississippi by 75 points in 1964, but still had limited support in pockets of the state (namely NE Mississippi and Hancock County). This did not happen for Humphrey in 1968. It was thought Humphrey received less than 5% of the white vote in Mississippi. The vote being split down racial lines is helpful in this case because it gives an estimate of the racial makeup of an individual precinct. A precinct where Humphrey's percentage is very low would indicate a white, mostly segregated neighborhood or voting precinct. Remember that my theory is that Nixon would do better among whites in whiter precincts and worse among whites in more integrated or majority-minority areas.
3) Nixon's share of the conservative vote (Nixon's vote / Nixon + Wallace vote) in the Deep South was 32%. My definition of Deep South is the same as V.O. Key's --- Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. I believe this number to a good barometer for Nixon success in Mississippi. Nixon's share of the conservative vote in Mississippi was just under 18%.
City voters
My 1968 city precincts sheet can be found here. It is sorted by Nixon's share of the conservative/white vote.
White voters in cities were the most likely to support Nixon. In my sample, Nixon won 33% of the conservative vote in Jackson, Hattiesburg, and Greenville ---- this was about the same as his share of the overall conservative vote in the Deep South region. Of the 19 precincts where Nixon's share of the conservative vote was highest, all were located within cities. In my sample, 34 of the 43 precincts where Nixon exceeded his Deep South share of the conservative vote were in cities. The question now is what are the characteristics of these areas where Nixon did relatively well.
When I plugged in the values for Humphrey support and Nixon's share of the conservative vote, it gave me a correlation value of -.3692 indicating a moderate to somewhat strong correlation. This would mean that the lower Humphrey % or segregated a neighborhood was, it was generally more likely for these areas to support Nixon. Of the 34 city precincts in my sample where Nixon exceeded his Deep South conservative %, Humphrey got 10% or less in 27 of them. Nixon won 14 precincts outright in my sample and 12 of these were in city precincts where Humphrey got less than 10%. This means that Nixon's best areas in Mississippi tended to be in white, segregated neighborhoods in the state's densely populated areas.
There were outliers that prevented this correlation from being higher. For example, there were precincts in Greenville and Jackson where Humphrey won a supermajority of votes and Nixon exceeded the 32% mark. There were also precincts where Humphrey got a very small % of the vote (again, indicating a largely segregated neighborhood) and Wallace did very well. However, Nixon's urban strength in the state was typically in precincts with a low percentage of Humphrey (i.e. black) voters.
Town voters
My 1968 town precincts sheet can be found here.
As pointed out in my screenshot, white voters in towns were less likely to support Nixon than white voters in cities. In my sample, Nixon got a quarter of the white voters in Mississippi towns. Of the 43 precincts in my sample where Nixon exceeded his Deep South conservative share, 6 were in towns. When I plugged in values for Humphrey support and Nixon's % of the white vote, it spit out a correlation of -.1721, which would indicate a weak correlation for Nixon support in white, segregated neighborhoods. The Humphrey % in Nixon's best town precincts tend to bear this out. The top 2 Nixon town precincts were in Leland where Humphrey got 35-40% of the vote (i.e. very much integrated). His 3rd and 4th best town precincts were in McComb in areas where Humphrey got less than 5% of the vote (i.e. very much segregated). This along with the correlation number for all 30 town precincts in my sample show that there wasn't much consistency in Nixon support and segregated neighborhoods in smaller Mississippi towns.
Country voters
My 1968 country precincts sheet can be found here.
Not surprisingly, Nixon fared worst among white voters in the country. Wallace's hardline stance against civil rights was popular among this demographic. In my sample, Nixon won about 1/8 (12%) of the white or conservative vote in country precincts. Of the 43 precincts in my sample where Nixon exceeded his Deep South conservative share, just 2 were in the country. The correlation between Humphrey % and Nixon % of the white vote was .2261 ---- this was a positive correlation. Meaning that there was a correlation between Humphrey % (and the less white an area is) and Nixon's share of the white vote. Granted, this was a weak correlation, but was the opposite of what I was looking for in my theory. In the 10 precincts of my rural sample where Nixon won the highest % of the white/conservative vote, the Humphrey % ranged from 28-50% in all but 1. This would indicate that these rural areas of relative Nixon strength were integrated though given that these were rural precincts this was less of a big deal than an integrated area in a city or town (population density, etc.).
Conclusion
There was a divide among white voters in Mississippi that was largely based on geography in the 1968 election. Urban white voters were more likely to back Nixon than rural white voters (though Wallace still won urban white voters) who overwhelmingly favored Wallace. Semi-urban white voters in smaller towns like Kosciusko, McComb, and Forest were somewhere in between these two. There was a moderate to somewhat strong negative correlation of Humphrey support to Nixon's share of the conservative vote. Meaning that a precinct with a high % of whites would be more likely to back Nixon. Urban whites in precincts with a higher % of Humphrey/black voters were more likely to back Wallace. This divide was not seen as much in country or town precincts and the correlation between Humphrey and Nixon support was considered weak. In short, the people most likely to support Nixon in 1968 in Mississippi were urban/city whites in white, segregated neighborhoods.
So, my theory was somewhat correct. City voters in integrated areas were less likely to back Nixon and went for Wallace at higher rates. However, this was not as true in town precincts and country precincts.
