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Southern Democrats

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Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the Southern United States.

In the 19th century, Southern Democrats were people in the South who believed in Jacksonian democracy. In the 19th century, they defended slavery in the United States, and promoted its expansion into the West against northern Free Soil opposition. The United States presidential election of 1860 formalized the split in the Democratic Party and brought about the American Civil War. Stephen Douglas was the candidate for the Northern Democratic Party, and John C. Breckinridge represented the Southern Democratic Party. Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery, was the Republican Party candidate.[1] After Reconstruction ended in the late 1870s so-called redeemers controlled all the Southern states and disenfranchised blacks (who were Republicans). The "Solid South" gave nearly all its electoral votes to Democrats in presidential elections. Republicans seldom were elected to office outside some Appalachian mountain districts and a few heavily German-American counties of Texas.

The monopoly that the Democratic Party held over most of the South first showed major signs of breaking apart in 1948, when many white Southern Democrats, upset by the policies of desegregation enacted during the administration of Democratic President Harry Truman, created the States Rights Democratic Party. This new party, commonly referred to as the "Dixiecrats", nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond for President. The Dixiecrats won most of the deep South, where Truman was not on the ballot. The new party collapsed after the election, while Thurmond became a Republican in the 1960s.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, although a southern Democrat himself, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. This led to heavy opposition from both Southern Democrats and Southern Republicans. Subsequent to the passage of civil rights legislation, many white southerners switched to the Republican Party at the national level. Many scholars have said that Southern whites shifted to the Republican Party due to racial conservatism.[2][3][4] Many continued to vote for Democrats at the state and local levels, especially before the Republican Revolution of 1994.

Between 2000 and 2010, Republicans gained a solid advantage over Democrats in most Southern states. In 2016, Republican candidate Donald Trump won a majority of the vote in Elliott County, Kentucky, the first time that it voted for a Republican presidential candidate. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won Georgia, the first time since 1992 that Georgia voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. Noted modern-day Southern Democrats include Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper, Virginia governor Ralph Northam, Virginia's U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, and Georgia's U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

History

1828–61

Main article: History of the United States Democratic Party

The title of "Democrat" has its beginnings in the South, going back to the founding of the Democratic-Republican Party in 1793 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It held to small government principles and distrusted the national government. Foreign policy was a major issue. After being the dominant party in U.S. politics from 1800 to 1829, the Democratic-Republicans split into two factions by 1828: the federalist National Republicans, and the Democrats. The Democrats and Whigs were evenly balanced in the 1830s and 1840s. However, by the 1850s, the Whigs disintegrated. Other opposition parties emerged but the Democrats were dominant. Northern Democrats were in serious opposition to Southern Democrats on the issue of slavery; Northern Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas, believed in Popular Sovereignty—letting the people of the territories vote on slavery. The Southern Democrats (known as "Dixiecrats"), reflecting the views of the late John C. Calhoun, insisted slavery was national.

The Democrats controlled the national government from 1852 until 1860, and Presidents Pierce and Buchanan were friendly to Southern interests. In the North, the newly formed anti-slavery Republican Party came to power and dominated the electoral college. In the 1860 presidential election, the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, but the divide among Democrats led to the nomination of two candidates: John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky represented Southern Democrats, and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois represented Northern Democrats. Nevertheless, the Republicans had a majority of the electoral vote regardless of how the opposition split or joined together and Abraham Lincoln was elected.

1861–1933

After the election of Abraham Lincoln, Southern Democrats led the charge to secede from the Union and establish the Confederate States. The United States Congress was dominated by Republicans, save for Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the only senator from a state in rebellion to reject secession. The Border States of Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri were torn by political turmoil. Kentucky and Missouri were both governed by pro-secessionist Southern Democratic Governors who vehemently rejected Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops. Kentucky and Missouri both held secession conventions, but neither officially declared secession. Southern Democrats in Maryland faced a Unionist Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks and the Union Army. Armed with the suspension of habeas corpus and Union troops, Governor Hicks was able to stop Maryland's secession movement. Maryland was the only state south of the Mason–Dixon line whose governor affirmed Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops.

After secession, the Democratic vote in the North split between the War Democrats and the Peace Democrats or "Copperheads". The War Democrats voted for Lincoln in the 1864 election, and Lincoln had a War Democrat — Andrew Johnson — on his ticket. In the South, during Reconstruction the white Republican element, called "Scalawags" became smaller and smaller as more and more joined the Democrats. In the North, most War Democrats returned to the Democrats, and when the "Panic of 1873" hit, the GOP was blamed and the Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives in 1874. The Democrats emphasized that since Jefferson and Jackson they had been the party of states rights, which added to their appeal in the white South.

At the beginning of the 20th century the Democrats, led by the dominant Southern wing, had a strong representation in Congress. They won both houses in 1912 and elected Woodrow Wilson, a New Jersey academic with deep Southern roots and a strong base among the Southern middle class. The GOP regained Congress in 1918.

From 1921 until 1930, the Democrats, despite universal dominance in most of the South, were relegated to second place status in national politics, controlling no branch of the federal government. In 1928 several Southern states dallied with voting Republican in supporting Herbert Hoover over Al Smith, but the behavior was short lived as the Stock Market Crash of 1929 returned Republicans to disfavor throughout the South. Nationally, Republicans lost Congress in 1930 and the White House in 1932 by huge margins. By this time, too, the Democratic Party leadership began to change its tone somewhat on racial politics. With the Great Depression gripping the nation, and with the lives of most Americans disrupted, the assisting of African-Americans in American society was seen as necessary by the new government.

1933–80

During the 1930s, as the New Deal began to move Democrats as a whole to the left in economic policy, Southern Democrats were mostly supportive, although by the late 1930s there was a growing conservative faction. Both factions supported Roosevelt's foreign policies. By 1948 the protection of segregation led Democrats in the Deep South to reject Truman and run a third party ticket of Dixiecrats in the 1948 election. After 1964, Southern Democrats lost major battles during the Civil Rights Movement. Federal laws ended segregation and restrictions on black voters.

During the Civil Rights Movement, Democrats in the South initially still voted loyally with their party. After the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the old argument that all whites had to stick together to prevent civil rights legislation lost its force because the legislation had now been passed. More and more whites began to vote Republican, especially in the suburbs and growing cities. Newcomers from the North were mostly Republican; they were now joined by conservatives and wealthy Southern whites, while liberal whites and poor whites, especially in rural areas, remained with the Democratic Party.[5]

The New Deal program of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) generally united the party factions for over three decades, since Southerners, like Northern urban populations, were hit particularly hard and generally benefited from the massive governmental relief program. FDR was adept at holding white Southerners in the coalition[6] while simultaneously beginning the erosion of Black voters away from their then-characteristic Republican preferences. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s catalyzed the end of this Democratic Party coalition of interests by magnetizing Black voters to the Democratic label and simultaneously ending White control of the Democratic Party apparatus.[7] A series of court decisions, rendering primary elections as public instead of private events administered by the parties, essentially freed the Southern region to change more toward the two-party behavior of most of the rest of the nation.

In the presidential elections of 1952 and 1956 Republican nominee Dwight David Eisenhower, a popular World War II general, won several Southern states, thus breaking some white Southerners away from their Democratic Party pattern. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a significant event in converting the Deep South to the Republican Party; in that year most Senatorial Republicans supported the Act (most of the opposition came from Southern Democrats). From the end of the Civil War to 1960 Democrats had solid control over the southern states in presidential elections, hence the term "Solid South" to describe the states' Democratic preference. After the passage of this Act, however, their willingness to support Republicans on a presidential level increased demonstrably. Republican nominee Goldwater, who had voted against the Civil Rights Act,[8] won many of the "Solid South" states over Democratic candidate Lyndon Johnson, himself a Texan, and with many this Republican support continued and seeped down the ballot to congressional, state, and ultimately local levels. A further significant item of legislation was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which targeted for preclearance by the U.S. Department of Justice any election-law change in areas where African-American voting participation was lower than the norm (most but not all of these areas were in the South); the effect of the Voting Rights Act on southern elections was profound, including the by-product that some White Southerners perceived it as meddling while Black voters universally appreciated it. Nixon aid Kevin Phillips told the New York Times in 1970 that "Negrophobe" whites would quit the Democrats if Republicans enforced the Voting Rights Act and blacks registered as Democrats.[9] The trend toward acceptance of Republican identification among Southern White voters was bolstered in the next two elections by Richard Nixon.

Denouncing the forced busing policy that was used to enforce school desegregation,[10] Richard Nixon courted populist conservative Southern whites with what is called the Southern Strategy, though his speechwriter Jeffrey Hart claimed that his campaign rhetoric was actually a "Border State Strategy" and accused the press of being "very lazy" when they called it a "Southern Strategy".[11] In the 1971 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ruling, the power of the federal government to enforce forced busing was strengthened when the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts had the discretion to include busing as a desegregation tool to achieve racial balance. Some southern Democrats became Republicans at the national level, while remaining with their old party in state and local politics throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Several prominent conservative Democrats switched parties to become Republicans, including Strom Thurmond, John Connally and Mills E. Godwin Jr.[12] In the 1974 Milliken v. Bradley decision, however, the ability to use forced busing as a political tactic was greatly diminished when the U.S. Supreme Court placed an important limitation on Swann and ruled that students could only be bused across district lines if evidence of de jure segregation across multiple school districts existed.

In 1976, former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter won every Southern state except Oklahoma and Virginia in his successful campaign to win the Presidency as a Democrat. In 1980 Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan won every southern state except for Georgia, although Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee were all decided by less than 3%.[b]

1980–2009

In 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan announced that he supported states rights.[13] Lee Atwater, who served as Reagan's chief strategist in the Southern states, claimed that by 1968, a vast majority of southern whites had learned to accept that racial slurs like "nigger" were offensive and that mentioning "states rights" and reasons for its justification had now become the best way to appeal to southern white voters.[14] with Reagan's success at the national level, the Republican Party moved sharply to the right, with the shrinkage of the liberal Rockefeller Republican element that had emphasized their support for civil rights.[15]

Along with race, economic and cultural conservatism (especially regarding abortion and school prayer) became more important in the South, with its large religious right element, such as Southern Baptists.[16] The South became fertile ground for the Republican Party, which was becoming more conservative as it shed its liberal "Rockefeller Republican" faction. The large black vote in the South dramatically shifted towards the Democratic Party. Well-established Democratic incumbents, however, still held sway over voters in many states, especially in Deep South. Although Republicans won most presidential elections in Southern states starting in 1964, Democrats controlled nearly every Southern state legislature until the mid-1990s and had continued to hold power over Southern politics until 2010. It wasn't until the 1990s that Democratic control began to implode, starting with the elections of 1994, in which Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress, through the rest of the decade.

Republicans first dominated presidential elections in the South, then controlled Southern gubernatorial and U.S. Congress elections, then took control of elections to several state legislatures and came to be competitive in or even to control local offices in the South. Southern Democrats of today who vote for the Democratic ticket are mostly urban liberals. Rural residents tend to vote for the Republican ticket, although there are sizable numbers of Conservative Democrats who cross party lines and vote Republican in national elections.[17]

Dr. Ralph Northam, a Democrat and the Governor of Virginia has admitted that he voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.[18] Despite this admission, Northam, a former state Senator who has served as Lieutenant Governor of Virginia since 2014 easily defeated the more progressive candidate, former Congressman Tom Perriello, by 55.9 percent to 44.1 percent to win the Democratic nomination.[19]

Many of the Representatives, Senators, and voters who were referred to as Reagan Democrats in the 1980s were conservative Southern Democrats. One exception has been Arkansas, whose state legislature has continued to be majority Democrat (having, however, given its electoral votes to the Republicans in the past three Presidential elections, except in 1992 and 1996 when "favorite son" Bill Clinton was the candidate and won each time) until 2012, when Arkansas voters selected a 21–14 Republican majority in the Arkansas Senate.

Another exception is North Carolina. Despite the fact that the state has voted for Republicans in every presidential election from 1980 until 2004 the governorship (until 2012), legislature (until 2010), as well as most statewide offices, it remains in Democratic control. The North Carolina congressional delegation was heavily Democratic until 2012 when the Republicans had occasion, after the 2010 United States census, to adopt a redistricting plan of their choosing. The incumbent Governor is Roy Cooper, a Democrat.

In 1992, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was elected president. Unlike Carter, however, Clinton was only able to win the southern states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. While running for President, Clinton promised to "end welfare as we have come to know it" while in office.[20] In 1996, Clinton would fulfill his campaign promise and the longtime Republican goal of major welfare reform came into fruition. After two welfare reform bills sponsored by the Republican-controlled Congress were successfully vetoed by the President,[21] a compromise was eventually reached and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was signed into law on August 22, 1996.[20]

During the Clinton presidency, the southern strategy shifted towards the so-called "culture war," which saw major political battles between the Religious Right and the secular Left. Southern Democrats still did and do see much support on the local level, however, and many of them are not as progressive as the Democratic party as a whole. Southern general elections in which the Democrat is to the right of the Republican are still not entirely unheard of.[22]

Chapman notes a split vote among many conservative Southern Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s who supported local and statewide conservative Democrats while simultaneously voting for Republican presidential candidates.[23] This tendency of many Southern whites to vote for the Republican presidential candidate but Democrats from other offices lasted until the 2010 midterm elections. In the November 2008 elections, Democrats won 3 out of 4 U.S. House seats from Mississippi, 3 out of 4 in Arkansas, 5 out of 9 in Tennessee, and achieved near parity in the Georgia and Alabama delegations. However, nearly all white Democratic congressmen in the South lost reelection in 2010. That year, Democrats won only one U.S House seat each in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Arkansas, and two out of nine House seats in Tennessee, and they lost their one Arkansas seat in 2012. Following the November 2010 elections, John Barrow of Georgia was left as the only one white Democratic U.S. House member in the Deep South, and he lost reelection in 2014. There would not be another until Joe Cunningham was elected to a South Carolina district in 2018. Democrats lost control of the North Carolina and Alabama legislatures in 2010, the Louisiana and Mississippi legislatures in 2011 and the Arkansas legislature in 2012. Additionally, in 2014, Democrats lost four U.S. Senate seats in the South (in West Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Louisiana) that they had previously held. Presently, most of the U.S. House or state legislative seats held by Democrats in the South are based in majority-minority or urban districts.

However, even since 2010, Democrats have not been completely shut out of power in the South. Democrat John Bel Edwards was elected governor of Louisiana in 2015, running as a pro-life, pro-gun conservative. In 2017, moderate Democrat Doug Jones was elected Senator from Alabama in a special election, breaking the Democratic losing streak in Alabama. 2019 saw some additional successes for Southern Democrats, as they won control of both houses of the Virginia Legislature, Andy Beshear was elected Governor of Kentucky, narrowly defeating Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, and Edwards won reelection in Louisiana.

2009–20

In 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn in to office of the United States presidency, Southern Democrats controlled both branches of the Alabama General Assembly, the Arkansas General Assembly, the Delaware General Assembly, the Louisiana State Legislature, the Maryland General Assembly, the Mississippi Legislature, the North Carolina General Assembly, and the West Virginia Legislature, along with the Council of the District of Columbia, the Kentucky House of Representatives, and the Virginia Senate. In 2017, when Barack Obama left office of the United States presidency, Southern Democrats still controlled both branches of the Delaware General Assembly and the Maryland General Assembly, along with the Council of the District of Columbia. However, they had lost control of the state legislatures in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and West Virginia.

Due to growing urbanization and changing demographics in many Southern states, more liberal Democrats have found success in the South. In the 2018 elections, Democrats nearly succeeded in taking governor's seats in Georgia and Florida, won 12 national House seats in the South and performed well in Senate races in Texas and Florida:[24] the trend continued in the 2019 elections, where Democrats took both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, and in 2020 where Joe Biden won Georgia, along with Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff winning both Senate seats in that state just two months later.

Election results

Won by Biden/Harris
2020 United States presidential election results
States /
Commonwealth /
Federal district 		United States presidential election Democratic
# % Change
Alabama United States presidential election in Alabama 849,624 36.57% Steady0
Arkansas United States presidential election in Arkansas 423,932 34.78% Steady0
Delaware United States presidential election in Delaware 296,268 58.74% Steady0
District of Columbia United States presidential election in the District of Columbia 317,323 92.15% Steady0
Florida United States presidential election in Florida 5,297,045 47.86% Steady0
Georgia United States presidential election in Georgia 2,473,633 49.47% Increase1
Kentucky United States presidential election in Kentucky 772,474 36.15% Steady0
Louisiana United States presidential election in Louisiana 856,034 39.85% Steady0
Maryland United States presidential election in Maryland 1,985,023 65.36% Steady0
Mississippi United States presidential election in Mississippi 539,398 41.06% Steady0
North Carolina United States presidential election in North Carolina 2,684,292 48.59% Steady0
Oklahoma United States presidential election in Oklahoma 503,890 32.29% Steady0
South Carolina United States presidential election in South Carolina 1,091,541 43.43% Steady0
Tennessee United States presidential election in Tennessee 1,143,711 37.45% Steady0
Texas United States presidential election in Texas 5,259,126 46.48% Steady0
Virginia United States presidential election in Virginia 2,413,568 54.11% Steady0
West Virginia United States presidential election in West Virginia 235,984 29.69% Steady0
2020 United States federal elections results
States /
Commonwealth /
Federal district 		United States Congress Total
seats 		Democratic
Seats Change
Alabama United States House of Representatives in Alabama 7 1 Steady0
United States Senate in Alabama 1 0 Decrease1
Arkansas United States House of Representatives in Arkansas 4 0 Steady0
United States Senate in Arkansas 1 0 Steady0
Delaware United States House of Representatives in Delaware 1 1 Steady0
United States Senate in Delaware 1 1 Steady0
District of Columbia United States House Delegate for the District of Columbia 1 1 Steady0
Florida United States House of Representatives in Florida 27 11 Decrease2
Georgia United States House of Representatives in Georgia 14 6 Increase1
United States Senate in Georgia 2 2 Increase2
Kentucky United States House of Representatives in Kentucky 6 1 Steady0
United States Senate in Kentucky 1 0 Steady0
Louisiana United States House of Representatives in Louisiana 6 1 Steady0
United States Senate in Louisiana 1 0 Steady0
Maryland United States House of Representatives in Maryland 8 7 Steady0
Mississippi United States House of Representatives in Mississippi 4 1 Steady0
United States Senate in Mississippi 1 0 Steady0
North Carolina United States House of Representatives in North Carolina 13 5 Increase2
United States Senate in North Carolina 1 0 Steady0
Oklahoma United States House of Representatives in Oklahoma 5 0 Decrease1
United States Senate in Oklahoma 1 0 Steady0
South Carolina United States House of Representatives in South Carolina 7 0 Decrease1
United States Senate in South Carolina 1 0 Steady0
Tennessee United States House of Representatives in Tennessee 9 2 Steady0
United States Senate in Tennessee 1 0 Steady0
Texas United States House of Representatives in Texas 36 13 Steady0
United States Senate in Texas 1 0 Steady0
Virginia United States House of Representatives in Virginia 11 7 Steady0
United States Senate in Virginia 1 1 Steady0
West Virginia United States House of Representatives in West Virginia 3 0 Steady0
United States Senate in West Virginia 1 0 Steady0
2018 United States gubernatorial elections results
States /
Commonwealth /
Federal district 		Governors Seat Democratic
Change
Alabama Governor of Alabama 0 Steady0
Arkansas Governor of Arkansas 0 Steady0
Florida Governor of Florida 0 Steady0
Georgia Governor of Georgia 0 Steady0
Maryland Governor of Maryland 0 Steady0
Oklahoma Governor of Oklahoma 0 Steady0
South Carolina Governor of South Carolina 0 Steady0
Tennessee Governor of Tennessee 0 Steady0
Texas Governor of Texas 0 Steady0
2018 United States state legislative election results
States /
Commonwealth /
Federal district 		Legislatures Total
seats 		Democratic
Seats Change
Alabama Alabama House of Representatives 105 28 Decrease4
Alabama Senate 37 8 Steady0
Arkansas Arkansas House of Representatives 100 24 Steady0
Arkansas Senate 18 5 Steady0
Delaware Delaware House of Representatives 41 26 Increase1
Delaware Senate 10 6 Increase1
District of Columbia Council of the District of Columbia 13 11 Steady0
Florida Florida House of Representatives 120 47 Increase6
Florida Senate 23 7 Increase1
Georgia Georgia House of Representatives 180 75 Increase11
Georgia Senate 56 21 Increase2
Kentucky Kentucky House of Representatives 100 39 Increase2
Kentucky Senate 19 2 Decrease1
Louisiana Louisiana House of Representatives 5 3 Decrease2
Louisiana Senate 1 0 Steady0
Maryland Maryland House of Delegates 141 99 Increase8
Maryland Senate 47 32 Decrease1
Mississippi Mississippi House of Representatives 4 2 Decrease2
North Carolina North Carolina House of Representatives 120 55 Increase10
North Carolina Senate 50 21 Increase6
Oklahoma Oklahoma House of Representatives 101 25 Decrease2
Oklahoma Senate 25 7 Increase1
South Carolina South Carolina House of Representatives 124 44 Steady0
Tennessee Tennessee House of Representatives 99 26 Increase1
Tennessee Senate 19 4 Increase1
Texas Texas House of Representatives 150 67 Increase12
Texas Senate 17 5 Increase1
Virginia Virginia House of Delegates 2 0 Steady0
West Virginia West Virginia House of Delegates 100 41 Increase6
West Virginia Senate 34 14 Increase2
2018 United States mayoral election results
Cities Mayors Seat Democratic
Change
Austin, Texas Mayor of Austin 1 Steady0
Chesapeake, Virginia Mayor of Chesapeake 0 Steady0
Corpus Christi, Texas Mayor of Corpus Christi 0 Steady0
District of Columbia Mayor of the District of Columbia 1 Steady0
Garland, Texas Mayor of Garland 1 Increase1
Laredo, Texas Mayor of Laredo 0 Steady0
Lexington, Kentucky Mayor of Lexington 0 Decrease1
Louisville, Kentucky Mayor of Louisville 1 Steady0
Lubbock, Texas Mayor of Lubbock 0 Steady0
Nashville, Tennessee Mayor of Nashville 1 Steady0
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Mayor of Oklahoma City 0 Steady0
Virginia Beach, Virginia Mayor of Virginia Beach 0 Steady0

Noted Southern Democrats

Southern Democratic presidential tickets

At various times, registered Democrats from the South broke with the national party to nominate their own presidential and vice presidential candidates, generally in opposition to civil rights measures supported by the national nominees. There was at least one Southern Democratic effort in every presidential election from 1944 until 1968, besides 1952. On some occasions, such as in 1948 with Strom Thurmond, these candidates have been listed on the ballot in some states as the nominee of the Democratic Party.

Year Presidential nominee Home state Previous positions Vice presidential nominee Home state Previous positions Votes Notes
1860
John C. Breckinridge 		 Kentucky Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Kentucky's 8th congressional district
(1851–1855)
Vice President of the United States
(1857–1861)
Joseph Lane 		 Oregon Governor of Oregon
(1849–1850; 1853)
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Oregon Territory's at-large congressional district
(1851–1859)
United States Senator from Oregon
(1859–1861) 		848,019 (18.1%)
72 EV 		[126]
1944 Unpledged electors 143,238 (0.3%)
0 EV 		[127]
1948
Strom Thurmond 		 South Carolina Member of the South Carolina Senate
(1933–1938)
Governor of South Carolina
(1947–1951)
Fielding L. Wright 		 Mississippi Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi
(1944–1946)
Governor of Mississippi
(1946–1952) 		1,175,930 (2.4%)
39 EV 		[128]
1956 Unpledged electors 196,145 (0.3%)
0 EV 		[129]

T. Coleman Andrews 		 Virginia Commissioner of Internal Revenue
(1953–1955)
Thomas H. Werdel 		 California Member of the California State Assembly from the 39th district
(1943–1947)
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 10th congressional district
(1949–1953) 		107,929 (0.2%)
0 EV 		[130]
Walter Burgwyn Jones  Alabama Judge
Member of the Alabama House of Representatives
(1919–1921)
Herman Talmadge 		 Georgia Governor of Georgia
(1947; 1948–1955) 		0 (0.0%)
1 EV 		[131]
1960 Unpledged electors 610,409 (0.4%)
15 EV 		[132]

Orval Faubus 		 Arkansas Governor of Arkansas
(1955–1967)
John G. Crommelin 		 Alabama United States Navy Rear Admiral
Candidate for United States Senator from Alabama
(1950, 1954, 1956) 		44,984 (0.1%)
0 EV 		[133]
1964 Unpledged electors 210,732 (0.3%)
0 EV 		[134]
1968
George Wallace 		 Alabama Governor of Alabama
(1963–1967)
Curtis LeMay 		 Ohio United States Air Force Chief of Staff
(1961–1965) 		9,901,118 (13.5%)
45 EV 		[135]

See also


Notes

b South of the Mason–Dixon line Carter won just 34 electoral votes – his own Georgia, plus Delaware, Maryland, and District of Columbia.

References

  1. ^ https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Southern_Democratic_Party
  2. ^ Carmines, Edward; Stimson, James (1990). Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691023311. Archived from the original on May 16, 2018. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
  3. ^ Valentino, Nicholas A.; Sears, David O. (2005). "Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: Race and Partisan Realignment in the Contemporary South". American Journal of Political Science. 49 (3): 672–88. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2005.00136.x. ISSN 0092-5853.
  4. ^ Ilyana, Kuziemko; Ebonya, Washington (2018). "Why Did the Democrats Lose the South? Bringing New Data to an Old Debate". American Economic Review. 108 (10): 2830–2867. doi:10.1257/aer.20161413. ISSN 0002-8282.
  5. ^ Byron E. Shafer and Richard Johnston, The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South (2009) pp. 173–74
  6. ^ As in declining to invite African-American Jesse Owens, hero of the 1936 Olympics, to the White House.
  7. ^ Until the 1960s the Democratic Party primaries were tantamount to election in most of the South and, being restricted largely to caucasians, were openly called White primaries.
  8. ^ https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/goldwater-barry-m
  9. ^ https://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-southern.pdf
  10. ^ Lawrence J McAndrews (Summer 1998). "The Politics of Principle: Richard Nixon". The Journal of Negro History. 83 (3): 187–200. doi:10.2307/2649015. JSTOR 2649015.
  11. ^ Hart, Jeffrey (2006-02-09). The Making of the American Conservative Mind (television). Hanover, New Hampshire: C-SPAN.
  12. ^ Joseph A. Aistrup (2015). The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South. p. 135.
  13. ^ Greenberg, David (November 20, 2007). "Dog-Whistling Dixie: When Reagan said "states' rights," he was talking about race". Slate. Archived from the original on January 12, 2012.
  14. ^ Branch, Taylor (1999). Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–65. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 242. ISBN 978-0-684-80819-2. OCLC 37909869.
  15. ^ Nicol C. Rae, The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present (1989).
  16. ^ Nicole Mellow (2008). The State of Disunion: Regional Sources of Modern American Partisanship. Johns Hopkins UP. p. 110. ISBN 9780801896460.
  17. ^ "Can the Republican Party Keep Trump Democrats?". National Review. 21 November 2016.
  18. ^ Grim, Ryan (28 February 2017). "Democratic Candidate For Virginia Governor Says He Voted For George W. Bush. Twice". HuffPost.
  19. ^ Times-Dispatch, GRAHAM MOOMAW AND PATRICK WILSON Richmond. "Northam defeats Perriello for Democratic nomination for governor; Gillespie edges Stewart in GOP contest".
  20. ^ a b Vobejda, Barbara (August 22, 1996). "Clinton Signs Welfare Bill Amid Division". Washington Post. Retrieved 2013-11-21.
  21. ^ Why blacks love Bill Clinton – interview with DeWayne Wickham, Salon.com, Suzy Hansen, published February 22, 2002, accessed October 21, 2013.
  22. ^ See, e.g., United States Senate election in Tennessee, 2012. Tennessee is, however, one of the few Southern states which lacks runoff party primaries.
  23. ^ Roger Chapman, Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia (2010) vol 1, p. 136
  24. ^ Kilgore, Ed. "A Different Kind of Democratic Party Is Rising in the South". New York Magazine. Retrieved 9 November 2018.
  25. ^ "Louisiana Governor Huey Pierce Long". nga.org. National Governors Association. 7 October 2011.
  26. ^ "LONG, Huey Pierce, (1893 - 1935)". bioguide.congress.gov. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. 8 October 2011.
  27. ^ "Ross Barnett, Segregationist, Dies; Governor of Mississippi in 1960s". The New York Times. November 7, 1987". The New York Times. 1987-11-07.
  28. ^ "Louisiana Governor Earl Kemp Long". nga.org. National Governors Association. 7 October 2011.
  29. ^ "BENTSEN, Lloyd Millard, Jr., (1921 - 2006)". bioguide.congress.gov. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. 8 October 2011.
  30. ^ "DAVIS, Jefferson, (1808 - 1889)". bioguide.congress.gov. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. 9 October 2011.
  31. ^ "EASTLAND, James Oliver, (1904 - 1986)". bioguide.congress.gov. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. 8 October 2011.
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  33. ^ "John Edwards (D-N.C.)". boston.com. Boston Globe. 8 October 2011.
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  36. ^ "Georgia Governor Richard Brevard Russell". nga.org. National Governors Association. 9 October 2011.
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  42. ^ "Georgia Governor Jimmy Earl Carter Jr". nga.org. National Governors Association. 9 October 2011.
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  47. ^ "Kentucky Governor Paul E. Patton". nga.org. National Governors Association. 9 October 2011.
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  66. ^ "Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen". nga.org. National Governors Association. 8 October 2011.
  67. ^ "Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco". nga.org. National Governors Association. 8 October 2011.
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  72. ^ "PRYOR, David Hampton, (1934 - )". bioguide.congress.gov. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. 8 October 2011.
  73. ^ "Arkansas Governor David Hampton Pryor". nga.org. National Governors Association. 8 October 2011.
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  126. ^ The ticket won 11 states; its best result was in Texas where it received 75.5%.
  127. ^ Electors not pledged to any candidate were on the ballot in South Carolina and Texas, where they received 7.5% and 11.8%, respectively.
  128. ^ Running as the nominees of the States' Rights Democratic Party, the ticket won 4 states, and received one additional vote from a Tennessee faithless elector pledged to Harry S. Truman. Its best result was in South Carolina, where it received 87.2% of the vote. In Alabama and Mississippi, Thurmond was listed as the Democratic nominee; Truman was the "National Democratic" candidate in Mississippi and was not on the ballot in Alabama.
  129. ^ Electors not pledged to any candidate were on the ballot in several states.
  130. ^ Running as the nominees of the States' Rights Party and Constitution Party, the ticket's best result was in Virginia, where it received 6.2% of the vote.
  131. ^ Jones and Talmadge received one electoral vote from an Alabama faithless elector pledged to Adlai Stevenson.
  132. ^ Electors not pledged to any candidate were on the ballot in several states. In Mississippi, the slate of unpledged electors won the state. In Alabama, eleven Democratic electors were chosen, six unpledged and five for nominee John F. Kennedy. The Mississippi and Alabama unpledged electors voted for Harry F. Byrd for President and Strom Thurmond for Vice President; in addition, one faithless elector from Oklahoma pledged to Richard Nixon voted for Byrd for President, but for Barry Goldwater for Vice President.
  133. ^ Running as the nominees of the National States' Rights Party, the ticket's best result was in Arkansas, where it received 6.8% of the vote.
  134. ^ Electors not pledged to any candidate were on the ballot in Alabama, where they replaced national nominee Lyndon B. Johnson and received 30.6% of the vote.
  135. ^ Running as the nominees of the American Independent Party, the ticket won 5 states, and received one additional vote from a North Carolina faithless elector pledged to Richard Nixon. Its best result was in Alabama, where it received 65.9% of the vote. Wallace was the official Democratic nominee in Alabama (Hubert Humphrey was listed as the "National Democratic" candidate).

Further reading

  • Barone, Michael, and others. The Almanac of American Politics 1976: The Senators, the Representatives and the Governors: Their Records and Election Results, Their States and Districts (1975–2017); new edition every 2 years; detailed political profile of every governor and member of Congress, as well as state and district politics
  • Bateman, David, Ira Katznelson and John S. Lapinski. (2020). Southern Nation: Congress and white supremacy after reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
  • Black, Earl and Merle Black. Politics and Society in the South (1989)
  • Bullock III, Charles S. and Mark J. Rozell, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Southern Politics (2012)
  • Bullock, Charles S.; MacManus, Susan A.; Mayer, Jeremy D.; Rozell, Mark J. (2019). The South and the Transformation of U.S. Politics. Oxford University Press.
  • Glaser, James M. The Hand of the Past in Contemporary Southern Politics (2013)
  • Key, V. O. Southern Politics in State and Nation (1951), famous classic
  • Kuziemko, Ilyana, and Ebonya Washington. "Why did the Democrats lose the south? Bringing new data to an old debate" ( No. w21703. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015.) online
  • Rae, Nicol C. Southern Democrats (Oxford University Press, 1994)
  • Richter, William L. Historical Dictionary of the Old South (2005)
  • Shafer, Byron E. The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South (2006) excerpt and text search
  • Twyman, Robert W. and David C. Roller, eds. Encyclopedia of Southern History LSU Press (1979).
  • Woodard, J. David. The New Southern Politics (2006)
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