The Republican Party was virtually nonexistent as a result of disenfranchisement among African Americans and poor whites,[3] including voter intimidation against those who refused to vote Democratic.

Anger with the FDR administration intensified further when the Supreme Court ruled in Smith v. Allwright that the white primaries upon which the politics of Mississippi and most other Southern states[a] were based violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

Consequently, Mississippi Democrats, already developing opposition to the New Deal, which had provided substantial work for white Mississippians during the 1930s, were very concerned about Roosevelt being renominated for a fourth term.

[7] Consequently, Governor Thomas L. Bailey was forced to call a convention that deleted the Democratic electors’ names from the presidential ballot, which meant that they were pledged to vote for Roosevelt.

[7] Mississippi was won by incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D–New York), running with Senator Harry S. Truman, with 93.56 percent of the popular vote, against Governor Thomas E. Dewey (R–New York), running with Governor John Bricker, with 6.44 percent of the popular vote, making it Roosevelt's strongest state in the election.