The Wallace Vote and Political Change in Tennessee

Abstract

The significance of the Wallace vote, its origins and durability, and its function in the changing southern political scene are still in need of empirical data and realistic analysis. A large portion of the presidential (and other) voting public in the South has become detached from its moorings and is the object of many who would form a new national voting majority coalition. While the South has been less moved than other areas by some developments, it has shown a great tendency toward regional change and volatility in its electoral alignments since the Second World War. It has moved toward greater susceptibility to Republican presidential candidates and/or conservative third-party movements. The 1960s have been particularly marked by major upheavals in the fortunes of the Democratic party there. Goldwater victories in the South in 1964 plus the electoral successes and strengths of Nixon and Wallace in 1968 have aroused renewed, pressing interest in questions of southern political change and party realignment. Though by no means entirely new, these questions have special relevance in a rapidly changing America today.' A look at the presidential voting patterns in Tennessee, a rim state of this changing South, sheds some light on past hypotheses