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 War Unionist sentiment – chiefly Fannin but also to a lesser extent Pickens, Gilmer and Towns[2] – and in presidential elections to a small number of counties where blacks were not fully disenfranchised.

[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 affect the 1888 election.

Consequently, Cleveland would gain five percent on his 1884 percentage in Georgia as opposition turnout fell by one-seventh.