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Philadelphia Story. One positive effect that Wallace did exert was to help turn out the Negro vote. Throughout the campaign, many dissident blacks had urged a boycott of the presidential elections as a gesture of frustration and contempt for the entire political system. In Newark, Detroit, New York, Boston and Los Angeles, the threat of Wallace persuaded at least some Negro voters to try to neutralize the white backlash vote by supporting Humphrey. In Philadelphia, Negroes in the north-side ghetto allied with Jewish voters—who went in great numbers for Humphrey throughout the U.S.—and some upper-middle-class whites to give Humphrey a 270,000 plurality. It was enough to offset Nixon's gains elsewhere in Pennsylvania and carry the state's 29 electoral votes for the Democrats. Roughly 90% of registered Negroes turned out in some areas. Throughout the South, where one-third of the region's 3,250,000 Negro voters were participating in a presidential election for the first time, balloting was heavy.
In much of the nation, however, the Negro turnout fell somewhat below the level of 1964, when the fear of a Goldwater victory brought a record 6,048,000 to the polls. This year, Hubert Humphrey received some 83% of Cleveland's Negro vote, where L.B.J. had collected nearly 95% four years ago. If Negroes were generally less than enthusiastic about Richard Nixon, many did not seem to fear him quite enough to get to the polls.
Tug of Allegiance. Expectedly, the nation's suburbs went heavily Republican in general, although in the East the G.O.P. failed to muster the 60% to 62% majorities that it customarily receives in vintage years. The spread between the Republicans and Democrats in New York's Nassau County, usually one of the Republicans' biggest plurality counties in the nation, was only some 10%. Young professionals and white-collar workers were also considerably less inclined to vote Republican this year, especially those living in urban centers.
In some large Northern cities such as Buffalo and Detroit, Middle and Eastern European ethnic groups surprisingly eschewed Wallace and split their votes fairly evenly between Humphrey and Nixon. They reflected the tug of allegiance between the Democrats' traditional support of the working man and the Republicans' more militant stand on the issue of law and order. Middleclass Catholic families that abandoned the G.O.P. to vote for John Kennedy eight years ago were largely back within the Republican fold. The nation's women voters, partly because of the bombing halt, tended to favor Humphrey."