Excepting the 1928 election when fierce anti-Catholicism and Prohibitionism caused Herbert Hoover to defeat the wet Catholic Al Smith, Florida since the end of the Reconstruction era had been a classic Southern one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party. Disfranchisement of African-Americans and many poor whites had virtually eliminated the Republican Party – only nine Republicans had ever been elected to the state legislature since 1890 – and Democratic primaries were the sole competitive elections. Under the influence of Senator Claude Pepper, Florida had abolished the poll tax in 1937, leading to steady increases in voter turnout during the following several elections; however, there was no marked increase in African-American voting and Democratic hegemony remained unchallenged: FDR did not lose a single county in the state during his four elections.
Largely because it had a smaller proportion of Negroes in its population than Mississippi, South Carolina or Louisiana, Florida was less deeply involved in the bolt from the national Democratic Party. Frank D. Upchurch, a long-time adversary of Senator Pepper, had recommended that the renomination of Truman be fought, whilst the more liberal Pepper argued that unless Dwight Eisenhower replaced Truman as the nominee, the Democrats had no chance of winning. In the primary campaign for electors, bolters won eleven and a half votes out of twenty and control of the state's delegation. When Florida's Democrats designated their presidential electors, four were pledged against Truman and four to vote for him, although only names of electors were listed. However, after the "States' Rights" convention in July, Miami Herald publisher Reuben Clein filed a civil suit to disqualify the four original electors who planned to vote for Thurmond. Senator Pepper reversed his earlier pledge to not support Truman, and a special session of the state legislature provided separate lists for all candidates, including the far-left former Vice-President Henry Wallace. Pepper campaigned on Dewey's alleged support of big business over the "little man", and Truman made a whistle-stop tour of the state in mid-October.
Vote
Harry Truman won by 87,708 votes or 15.19 percentage points against Republican opponent Thomas E. Dewey. In the socially conservative Panhandle, Truman was able to rely on having a strong economic program – which Thurmond entirely lacked – to hold off Thurmond's racial appeal. In more liberal South Florida – which had seen extensive settlement by Northerners since the war – his economic policies were a winner against Henry Wallace, who received only two percent of the state's vote but did an order of magnitude better in some Tampa precincts. Dewey nonetheless made dramatic gains upon previous Republican efforts in Florida. By carrying eleven counties, mostly in the southwest and on the east coast, he was only the fifth Republican to carry any Florida county at the presidential level since the poll tax' original implementation following the 1888 election. The Dewey counties had in earlier Democratic primaries typically backed "conservative" candidates favoring limited or no economic regulation, due to their lack of dependence on the traditionally "Southern" crops of cotton and tobacco, and would become the most consistently conservative and Republican counties in future presidential elections. Strom Thurmond, who had had to run as a third-party candidate under the "States' Rights" banner, nonetheless won over fifteen percent of the vote. Thurmond carried three counties but ran second in thirty-one others.
Electoral eccentricities
This is the last time,, that Florida was won by a Democratic presidential candidate by double digits; not even Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1964 landslide election nor Jimmy Carter in 1976 managed to win the state by double digits, despite both men being Southern Democrats. Republicans have won Florida by double digits in the following elections:
1952 and 1956 when Dwight D. Eisenhower won the state by margins of 10.02 and 14.54%
the 1972 election when Richard Nixon carried the state by a staggering margin 44.1% and won every single county making this the best showing by a Republican in the sunshine state ever.
the 1980 and 1984 elections when Ronald Reagan won the state by margins of 17 and 30.6% respectively
the 1988 election, when George Bush senior won the Sunshine State by a margin of 22.4%
This election is also the last time Seminole County and Highlands County have ever voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. Osceola County, which Truman won by two votes, would not vote Democratic again until 1996.
