Howard Callaway - Election Results

Election Results

Callaway won a plurality over Maddox in the general election, but the Arnall write-in effort denied the Republican a majority of votes. Using rural returns, the national television networks forecast a Maddox victory, but the projections failed to gauge Callaway's strength in urban areas. Three days later on November 11, 1966, Callaway held a slim lead, 453,665 to Maddox's 450,626. Arnall obtainced 52,831 write-in votes. Maddox led in 128 counties; Callaway, in 30; Arnall, only in Liberty County in the southeast. Callaway overall led by 121,000 votes in urban areas but trailed by 118,000 in rural precincts. In Atlanta, a correlation existed between Callaway voters and racial and income factors. Callaway took 79.5 percent among affluent whites but only 43.9 percent from working-class whites. Among the middle class, he received 51.7 percent. Lower-income whites gave 72.2 percent of their ballots to Lester Maddox. Poor black voters split evenly between Callaway and Arnall. Middle-class blacks voted 53.5 percent for Callaway, 43.2 percent for Arnall, and 3.4 percent for Maddox. In Macon, Callaway polled 87.4 percent among blacks; poor whites there gave Maddox 47.4 percent, nearly 25 percent points lower than in Atlanta. The Callaway plurality hence resulted from anti-Maddox blacks. The vote further fragmented along religious and educational lines. Maddox polled 53 percent from his fellow Baptists but only 20 percent from his opponent's Episcopalian denomination. Maddox also drew 20 percent from Methodists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans, and 5 percent from Jews. Sixty percent of whites with less than a high-school education chose Maddox, while only 13 percent of college graduates supported the Democratic nominee. Maddox led among voters who felt underpaid and with those lacking social or civic club memberships.