1956 United States Senate election in Georgia
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The 1956 United States Senate election in Georgia took place on November 6, 1956. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Walter F. George did not run for re-election.[1][2]
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September 12, 1956
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The open race for George's seat was the final chapter in the political rivalry between former Georgia Governor Herman Talmadge and Melvin Thompson which had begun a decade earlier with the three governors controversy. Talmadge soundly won the primary, ending Thompson's political career.
At this time, Georgia was a one-party state. Talmadge's victory in the September 12 primary was tantamount to election, and he was unopposed in the general election, which, alongside a concurrent election in South Carolina, is the last time a non-incumbent was unopposed in a United States Senate election.
Democratic primary
County unit system
From 1917 until 1962, the Democratic Party in the U.S. state of Georgia used a voting system called the county unit system to determine victors in statewide primary elections.[3]
The system was ostensibly designed to function similarly to the Electoral College, but in practice the large ratio of unit votes for small, rural counties to unit votes for more populous urban areas provided outsized political influence to the smaller counties.[4][5]
Under the county unit system, the 159 counties in Georgia were divided by population into three categories. The largest eight counties were classified as "Urban", the next-largest 30 counties were classified as "Town", and the remaining 121 counties were classified as "Rural". Urban counties were given 6 unit votes, Town counties were given 4 unit votes, and Rural counties were given 2 unit votes, for a total of 410 available unit votes. Each county's unit votes were awarded on a winner-take-all basis.[4][5]
Candidates were required to obtain a majority of unit votes (not necessarily a majority of the popular vote), or 206 total unit votes, to win the election. If no candidate received a majority in the initial primary, a runoff election was held between the top two candidates to determine a winner.[6]
Candidates
- Herman Talmadge, former Governor
- Melvin E. Thompson, former Governor
Results
| Democratic primary[7][8][9] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Votes | % | CUV |
| Herman Talmadge | 498,327 | 80.31 | 410 |
| Melvin E. Thompson | 122,152 | 19.69 | 0 |
| Write-ins | 13 | 0.00 | 0 |
General election
Results
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Herman Talmadge | 541,094 | 99.97% |  0.03 | |
| Write-in | 173 | 0.03% | |||
| Total votes | 541,267 | 100.00% | |||
| Democratic hold | Swing | ||||