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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[2] 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.[3] Between 1900 and 1948, no Republican presidential candidate ever obtained more than seven percent of the total presidential vote[4] – a vote which in 1924 reached as low as 6.6 percent of the total voting-age population[5] (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.[6] 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.[7] 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, aided by substantial majorities amongst the small but increasing number of blacks able to vote,[8] keep the state Democratic in the 1952 and 1956 elections.

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.[9] These wealthy businessmen would merge with hardline segregationists to draft Barry Goldwater for the Republican nomination in 1960, and at the same time, the “Independents” in the lowcountry moved to support GOP nominees Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. as they had in 1952.[9] At the same time, Protestant clergymen in the state were quite outspoken against the nomination of Catholic Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy by the Democratic Party.[10]

Both candidates toured the state in October, when James F. Byrnes, former governor, criticized severely the Kennedy platform as economically unaffordable and injurious to the states’ independence.[11] In September and October polls, the state was considered likely to go for Nixon,[12] and even on election night Nixon was leading until quite late when Kennedy overtook him.[13] Kennedy ultimately won the state by 2.48 percentage points,[14][15] being aided by an exceptional turnout for him amongst the state’s seventy-five thousand or so black voters,[16] and by the loyalty of the pro-Stevenson upcountry despite its distaste for his Catholicism.[17] Nixon won a narrow majority of the state’s white voters, and a strong majority amongst the wealthier whites of the growing Columbia and Charleston metropolitan areas.

This was the second to last time South Carolina voted Democratic. Had Gerald Ford won the state in 1976, South Carolina would have the nation's longest Republican streak. This was the first time Barnwell County, home of the influential “Barnwell Ring” of the state legislature, voted Republican since Ulysses S. Grant in 1872.[18]

Results

1960 United States presidential election in South Carolina
Party Candidate Votes %
Democratic John F. Kennedy 198,129 51.24%
Republican Richard Nixon 188,558 48.76%
Write-in 1 0.00%
Total votes 386,688 100%

Results by county

1960 United States presidential election in South Carolina by county
County John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Democratic
Richard Milhous Nixon
Republican
Margin Total votes cast
# % # % # %
Abbeville 3,064 78.38% 845 21.62% 2,219 56.77% 3,909
Aiken 6,674 38.38% 10,715 61.62% -4,041 -23.24% 17,389
Allendale 583 39.63% 888 60.37% -305 -20.73% 1,471
Anderson 13,901 78.33% 3,845 21.67% 10,056 56.67% 17,746
Bamberg 908 35.47% 1,652 64.53% -744 -29.06% 2,560
Barnwell 1,331 41.95% 1,842 58.05% -511 -16.10% 3,173
Beaufort 1,800 47.11% 2,021 52.89% -221 -5.78% 3,821
Berkeley 2,542 51.21% 2,422 48.79% 120 2.42% 4,964
Calhoun 536 38.62% 852 61.38% -316 -22.77% 1,388
Charleston 12,010 36.14% 21,223 63.86% -9,213 -27.72% 33,233
Cherokee 5,391 77.50% 1,565 22.50% 3,826 55.00% 6,956
Chester 4,262 71.97% 1,660 28.03% 2,602 43.94% 5,922
Chesterfield 4,450 76.43% 1,372 23.57% 3,078 52.87% 5,822
Clarendon 1,134 43.97% 1,445 56.03% -311 -12.06% 2,579
Colleton 1,962 43.77% 2,521 56.23% -559 -12.47% 4,483
Darlington 4,668 57.19% 3,494 42.81% 1,174 14.38% 8,162
Dillon 2,652 64.83% 1,439 35.17% 1,213 29.65% 4,091
Dorchester 2,357 40.07% 3,525 59.93% -1,168 -19.86% 5,882
Edgefield 846 36.88% 1,448 63.12% -602 -26.24% 2,294
Fairfield 1,633 51.32% 1,549 48.68% 84 2.64% 3,182
Florence 6,090 51.15% 5,815 48.85% 275 2.31% 11,905[a]
Georgetown 2,811 51.88% 2,607 48.12% 204 3.77% 5,418
Greenville 13,976 38.15% 22,657 61.85% -8,681 -23.70% 36,633
Greenwood 5,283 64.03% 2,968 35.97% 2,315 28.06% 8,251
Hampton 790 37.41% 1,322 62.59% -532 -25.19% 2,112
Horry 6,006 61.45% 3,768 38.55% 2,238 22.90% 9,774
Jasper 721 48.07% 779 51.93% -58 -3.87% 1,500
Kershaw 3,178 47.84% 3,465 52.16% -287 -4.32% 6,643
Lancaster 5,561 65.66% 2,909 34.34% 2,652 31.31% 8,470
Laurens 4,547 57.95% 3,299 42.05% 1,248 15.91% 7,846
Lee 1,487 53.41% 1,297 46.59% 190 6.82% 2,784
Lexington 4,159 38.98% 6,511 61.02% -2,352 -22.04% 10,670
McCormick 680 66.21% 347 33.79% 333 32.42% 1,027
Marion 2,397 59.29% 1,646 40.71% 751 18.58% 4,043
Marlboro 2,586 66.70% 1,291 33.30% 1,295 33.40% 3,877
Newberry 3,143 52.52% 2,841 47.48% 302 5.05% 5,984
Oconee 4,328 69.65% 1,886 30.35% 2,442 39.30% 6,214
Orangeburg 3,890 42.64% 5,233 57.36% -1,343 -14.72% 9,123
Pickens 2,546 37.74% 4,201 62.26% -1,655 -24.53% 6,747
Richland 11,694 36.06% 20,736 63.94% -9,042 -27.88% 32,430
Saluda 1,353 51.62% 1,268 48.38% 85 3.24% 2,621
Spartanburg 20,134 64.79% 10,940 35.21% 9,194 29.59% 31,074
Sumter 2,616 36.09% 4,633 63.91% -2,017 -27.82% 7,249
Union 5,229 72.53% 1,980 27.47% 3,249 45.07% 7,209
Williamsburg 1,513 39.43% 2,324 60.57% -811 -21.14% 3,837
York 8,707 61.23% 5,512 38.77% 3,195 22.47% 14,219
Totals 198,129 51.24% 188,558 48.76% 9,571 2.48% 386,687

Notes

  1. ^ There was one write-in vote from Florence County

References

  1. ^ "United States Presidential election of 1960 – Encyclopædia Britannica". Retrieved June 8, 2017.
  2. ^ "1960 Election for the Forty-Fourth Term (1961-65)". Retrieved June 8, 2017.
  3. ^ Phillips, Kevin P. The Emerging Republican Majority. pp. 208, 210. ISBN 9780691163246.
  4. ^ Mickey, Robert. Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944-1972. p. 440. ISBN 0691149631.
  5. ^ Mickey. Paths Out of Dixie, p. 27
  6. ^ Frederikson, Kari. The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968. p. 185. ISBN 9780807875445.
  7. ^ Graham, Cole Blease; Moore, William V. South Carolina Politics and Government. pp. 79, 81. ISBN 9780803270435.
  8. ^ Bedingfield, Sid (2014). Beating Down the Fear: The Civil Sphere and Political Change in South Carolina, 1940-1962 (Thesis). University of South Carolina Dissertations. p. 164. Docket 2793.
  9. ^ a b Mickey. Paths out of Dixie, p. 234
  10. ^ See Cassels, Louis (November 9, 1960). "Old Axoim of U.S. History Now in History's Junk Pie". Spokane Chronicle. p. 4.
  11. ^ "I'll Win with You, Dick Telles Dixie". Miami Herald. November 4, 1960. p. 35.
  12. ^ Hoffman, Fred S. (October 18, 1960). "A.P. Poll Shows Jack Nears Nixon". Fort Worth Star-Telegram. p. 3.
  13. ^ "Wins in South Carolina". The Paducah Sun. November 9, 1960. p. 7.
  14. ^ "1960 Presidential General Election Results – South Carolina". Retrieved June 8, 2017.
  15. ^ "The American Presidency Project – Election of 1960". Retrieved June 8, 2017.
  16. ^ Mickey. Paths out of Dixie, p. 233
  17. ^ Phillips. The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 263
  18. ^ Menendez, Albert J. (2005). The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp. 291–292. ISBN 0786422173.