Unionist regions covering almost all of East Tennessee, Kentucky Pennyroyal-allied Macon County, and the five Western Highland Rim counties of Carroll, Henderson, McNairy, Hardin and Wayne[3] voted Republican — generally by landslide margins — as they saw the Democratic Party as the "war party" who had forced them into a war they did not wish to fight.

[4] Contrariwise, the rest of Middle and West Tennessee who had supported and driven the state's secession was equally fiercely Democratic as it associated the Republicans with Reconstruction.

[11] After the beginning of the Great Depression, however, for the next third of a century Republicans would rarely contest statewide offices seriously, despite continuing dominance of East Tennessee and half a dozen Unionist counties in the middle and west of the state.

Thurmond did however make significant inroads into traditional Democratic support in the Black Belt of West Tennessee, where he received over eighty percent in Fayette County, and also did well in prosperous urban precincts in Nashville.

Truman received eleven of Tennessee's twelve electoral votes, with the other cast in favor of Thurmond by Preston Parks of Somerville, TN, who was also on the Dixiecrat slate.