Global InformationPolitics of the Southern United States information
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The politics of the Southern United States generally refers to the political landscape of the Southern United States. The institution of slavery had a profound impact on the politics of the Southern United States, causing the American Civil War and continued subjugation of African-Americans from the Reconstruction era to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Scholars have linked slavery to contemporary political attitudes, including racial resentment.[2] From the Reconstruction era to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, pockets of the Southern United States were characterized as being "authoritarian enclaves".[3][4][5][6]
The region was once referred to as the Solid South, due to its large consistent support for Democrats in all elective offices from 1877 to 1964. As a result, its Congressmen gained seniority across many terms, thus enabling them to control many congressional committees. Following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, Southern states became more reliably Republican in presidential politics, while Northeastern states became more reliably Democratic.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Studies show that some Southern whites during the 1960s shifted to the Republican Party, in part due to racial conservatism.[13][15][16] Majority support for the Democratic Party amongst Southern whites first fell away at the presidential level, and several decades later at the state and local levels.[17] Both parties are competitive in a handful of Southern states, known as swing states.
- ^ Regions and Divisions—2007 Economic Census". U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved January 14, 2013.
- ^ Acharya, Avidit; Blackwell, Matthew; Sen, Maya (2018-05-22). Deep Roots. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-17674-1.
- ^ Mickey, Robert (2015). Paths Out of Dixie. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-13338-6.
- ^ How to Save a Constitutional Democracy. University of Chicago Press. 2018. p. 22.
- ^ Kuo, Didi (2019). "Comparing America: Reflections on Democracy across Subfields". Perspectives on Politics. 17 (3): 788–800. doi:10.1017/S1537592719001014. ISSN 1537-5927. S2CID 202249318.
- ^ Gibson, Edward L. (2013). "Subnational Authoritarianism in the United States". Boundary Control. pp. 35–71. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139017992.003. ISBN 9780521127332. Retrieved 2019-12-26.
{{cite book}}:|website=ignored (help) - ^ "Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South". yalebooks.yale.edu. Archived from the original on June 5, 2019. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
- ^ Bullock, Charles S.; Hoffman, Donna R.; Gaddie, Ronald Keith (2006). "Regional Variations in the Realignment of American Politics, 1944–2004". Social Science Quarterly. 87 (3): 494–518. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6237.2006.00393.x. ISSN 0038-4941.
The events of 1964 laid open the divisions between the South and national Democrats and elicited distinctly different voter behavior in the two regions. The agitation for civil rights by southern blacks, continued white violence toward the civil rights movement, and President Lyndon Johnson's aggressive leadership all facilitated passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. [...] In the South, 1964 should be associated with GOP growth while in the Northeast this election contributed to the eradication of Republicans.
- ^ Gaddie, Ronald Keith (February 17, 2012). "Realignment". Oxford Handbooks Online. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195381948.013.0013. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
- ^ Stanley, Harold W. (1988). "Southern Partisan Changes: Dealignment, Realignment or Both?". The Journal of Politics. 50 (1): 64–88. doi:10.2307/2131041. ISSN 0022-3816. JSTOR 2131041. S2CID 154860857.
Events surrounding the presidential election of 1964 marked a watershed in terms of the parties and the South (Pomper, 1972). The Solid South was built around the identification of the Democratic party with the cause of white supremacy. Events before 1964 gave white southerners pause about the linkage between the Democratic party and white supremacy, but the 1964 election, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 altered in the minds of most the positions of the national parties on racial issues.
- ^ Miller, Gary; Schofield, Norman (2008). "The Transformation of the Republican and Democratic Party Coalitions in the U.S.". Perspectives on Politics. 6 (3): 433–50. doi:10.1017/S1537592708081218. ISSN 1541-0986. S2CID 145321253.
1964 was the last presidential election in which the Democrats earned more than 50 percent of the white vote in the United States.
- ^ "The Rise of Southern Republicans – Earl Black, Merle Black". hup.harvard.edu. Harvard University Press. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
When the Republican party nominated Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater—one of the few northern senators who had opposed the Civil Rights Act—as their presidential candidate in 1964, the party attracted many racist southern whites but permanently alienated African-American voters. Beginning with the Goldwater-versus-Johnson campaign more southern whites voted Republican than Democratic, a pattern that has recurred in every subsequent presidential election. [...] Before the 1964 presidential election the Republican party had not carried any Deep South state for eighty-eight years. Yet shortly after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, hundreds of Deep South counties gave Barry Goldwater landslide majorities.
- ^ a b Issue Evolution. Princeton University Press. 6 September 1990. ISBN 9780691023311. Archived from the original on May 16, 2018. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
- ^ Miller, Gary; Schofield, Norman (2003). "Activists and Partisan Realignment in the United States". American Political Science Review. 97 (2): 245–60. doi:10.1017/S0003055403000650. ISSN 1537-5943. S2CID 12885628.
By 2000, however, the New Deal party alignment no longer captured patterns of partisan voting. In the intervening 40 years, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had triggered an increasingly race-driven distinction between the parties. [...] Goldwater won the electoral votes of five states of the Deep South in 1964, four of them states that had voted Democratic for 84 years (Califano 1991, 55). He forged a new identification of the Republican party with racial conservatism, reversing a century-long association of the GOP with racial liberalism. This in turn opened the door for Nixon's "Southern strategy" and the Reagan victories of the eighties.
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Amanda Cox (2012-10-15). "Over the Decades, How States Have Shifted". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-11-09.