Election signs from the 40s?

[p51]

I'm building a model RR layout that'll take place in rural Eastern Tennessee in 1943 and I started wondering about elections signs the other day. I don't think this was a big election year there so there wouldn't be any signs, but how common were, "Vote for _____" signs during the war?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Paper was in very short supply in 1943-44, so local election signs tended to be thin paper broadsides tacked or pasted to fences or telephone poles. The most common format was VOTE DEMOCRATIC or VOTE REPUBLICAN, followed by a large photo of the main candidate and smaller cuts of other candidates on the party ticket, surrounded by generic printer cuts of flags, Uncle Sam, Columbia, the Statue of Liberty, and similar symbols. Strictly local elections might simply have VOTE JOE BLOW -- TOWN COUNCIL or some such in simple headline-gothic type. In both cases, pink or yellow paper might be used to attract attention.

The more urban the area, and the bigger election, the fancier the election posters, all the way up to full color 24-sheet billboards on major highways and in cities.

In Tennessee, there would have been few or no posters for Republican candidates, given that GOP operations in the former Confederate states were negligible until the 1960s.

 

[p51]

I am from the south originally and knew the storng influence the Democrats had even longer than into the 60s.
There was a heated senatorial election in Tennessee in 1942, so any elections in '43 would have been county-based, if any. It wouldn't be correct for my timeframe anyhow, but I was wondering anyway.

 

[rjb1]

I have an original Roosevelt campaign poster that could well have come from Tennessee since that's where I am and where I bought it. I can't remember if it it has any dates to say which Roosevelt election it was for, but I will check.
I'll also take a picture and relay that to you. It may not be of direct use but you can at least see what it looks like just for general information.
(The 1943 date of your setup would make this either a very old 1940 poster or a very early 1944 one.)

 

[ChiTownScion]

I model 1948. That was the year that the Pullman car monopoly was largely broken up, so it allows for both Pullman green fleet cars and recent railroad acquired cars painted in road colors, but it was also the year of the Truman- Dewey presidential election.

I run my equipment on a club layout with over ten scale miles of mostly double tracked main, so I really can't deal with details that are too road or era specific. That's the payoff: I can run 12-18 car passenger trains and long freights, and I can exactly replicate, say, the consist of the May 1948 Admiral (PRR NY to Chicago), but I have to run it sans Pennsy block signals and along side of 2014 unit coal drags.

 

[LizzieMaine]

This one's from Kentucky, but it's a good idea of what a locally-produced 1948 election poster would look like.