1944 United States presidential election in Georgia

With the exception of a handful of historically Unionist North Georgia counties – chiefly Fannin but also to a lesser extent Pickens, Gilmer and Towns – Georgia since the 1880s had been a one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party. Disfranchisement of almost all African-Americans and most poor whites had made the Republican Party virtually nonexistent outside of local governments in those few hill counties,[1] and the national Democratic Party served as the guardian of white supremacy against a Republican Party historically associated with memories of Reconstruction. The only competitive elections were Democratic primaries, which state laws restricted to whites on the grounds of the Democratic Party being legally a private club.[2]

1944 saw the beginning of the breakdown of this single-party political system when the Supreme Court in Smith v. Allwright ruled against the white primary system.[3] During the period between Smith and the 1944 election, further challenges from blacks[3] occurred after the state announced that coming primaries would remain all-white.[4] Despite some opposition amongst the Southern ruling elite to Roosevelt – mitigated by the replacement of Henry A. Wallace as Vice-Presidential nominee – the incumbent President again overwhelmingly carried the state, losing only 3 percent on his 1940 vote share.