The 1884 United States presidential election in Georgia took place on November 4, 1884, as part of the wider United States presidential election. Voters chose twelve representatives, or electors, to the
Electoral College, who voted for
president and
vice president.
Following Reconstruction, Georgia would be the first former Confederate state to substantially disenfranchise its newly enfranchised freedmen and many
poor whites, doing so in the early 1870s.[1] This largely limited the Republican Party to a few
North Georgia counties with substantial
Civil WarUnionist sentiment – chiefly
Fannin but also to a lesser extent
Pickens,
Gilmer and
Towns[2] – and in presidential elections to a small number of counties elsewhere where blacks were not fully disenfranchised. The Democratic Party served as the guardian of
white supremacy against a Republican Party historically associated with memories of
Reconstruction, and the main competition became
Democratic primaries, which were restricted to whites on the grounds of the Democratic Party being legally a private club.[3] This restriction was done by local county laws, but combined with the highly efficacious cumulative
poll tax introduced in 1877 meant that turnout declined steadily throughout the 1880s,[4] unlike any other former Confederate state except South Carolina.
Despite economic problems in the mountain counties due to
deflation produced by the
gold standard and large-scale government spending reductions by the “
Redeemer” Democrats,[5] voter turnout, especially for opposition parties, would maintain its poll tax-driven decline until the
Populist movement, which did not begin until five years after the 1884 election. Consequently, Cleveland and Hendricks were able to stabilize the decline from 1880, again carrying Georgia by almost a two-to-one margin.
Results
1884 United States presidential election in Georgia[6]
^
abVotes for candidates other than the Republican and Democratic were not separated by county but listed only as a state-wide total. They are included in the statewide total at the bottom of the county table.
References
^Mickey, Robert W.; Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944-1972, p. 76
ISBN1400838789
^Springer, Melanie Jean; How the States Shaped the Nation: American Electoral Institutions and Voter Turnout, 1920-2000, p. 155
ISBN022611435X
^Kousser, J. Morgan; The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910, p. 213
ISBN0-300-01973-4
^Kousser; The Shaping of Southern Politics, pp. 17-18
