1952 United States presidential election in Mississippi

The 1952 United States presidential election in Mississippi took place on November 4, 1952, as part of the United States presidential election of 1952. The Democratic Party candidate, Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, won the state of Mississippi over Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former Supreme Allied Commander Europe and General of the Army by a margin of 59,600 votes, or 20.88 percentage points. Eisenhower went on to win the election nationally, with 442 electoral votes and a commanding 10.9 percent lead over Stevenson in the popular vote.

Mississippi in this time period was a one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party. The Republican Party was virtually nonexistent as a result of disenfranchisement among poor whites and African Americans, including voter intimidation against those who refused to vote Democratic. The state Republican Party led by Perry Wilbon Howard II — who resided in Washington D.C. after 1928 — was entirely drawn from the state’s tiny black middle class and never contested non-presidential elections, serving entirely to sell federal patronage, mostly to white Democrats. The 1948 election split the National Democratic Party and segregationist Southern Democrats over the issue of civil rights for African Americans. In the 1952 election, Stevenson, a moderate on race issues, selected the segregationist Senator Sparkman as his running mate to avoid another split in the Democratic vote. However, this was not enough for some white Mississippians, who felt that the national Republican Party already offered a better prospect for their conservative social and economic goals.