Politics of the Southern United States
The politics of the Southern United States generally refers to the political landscape of the Southern United States. The institution of slavery has had a profound impact on the politics of the Southern United States, causing the Civil War, along with continued subjugation of African-Americans from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. From Reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, pockets of the Southern United States were "authoritarian enclaves". Scholars have linked the presence of slavery to contemporary political attitudes, including racial resentment among white Southerners.
The region was referred to as the Solid South, due to their consistent support for Democrats in all elective offices. 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, the Southern states became more reliably Republican in presidential politics, while Northeastern states became more reliably Democratic. Studies show that Southern whites shifted to the Republican Party due to racial conservatism. Among white Southerners, Democratic loyalties first fell away at the presidential level, followed much later at the state and local levels.
Southern states
According to the United States Census Bureau the following states are considered part of the "South."- Alabama
- Arkansas
- Florida
- Georgia
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Mississippi
- North Carolina
- Oklahoma
- South Carolina
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Virginia
- West Virginia
- Delaware
Post-Civil War
At the end of the Civil War, much of the conquered Confederacy lay in ruins. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868 placed most of the Confederate states under military rule, requiring Union Army governors to approve appointed officials and candidates for election. They enfranchised African American citizens and required voters to recite an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, effectively discouraging still-rebellious individuals from voting and led to Republican control of many state governments. This was interpreted as anarchy and upheaval by many residents. However, Democrats had regained power in most Southern states by the late 1870s. Later, this period came to be referred to as Redemption. From 1890-1908 states of the former Confederacy passed statutes and amendments to their state constitutions that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans and tens of thousands of poor whites. They did this through devices such as poll taxes and literacy tests.In the 1890s the South split bitterly, with poor cotton farmers moving to the Populist movement. In coalition with the remaining Republicans, the Populists briefly controlled Alabama and North Carolina. The local elites, townspeople, and landowners fought back, regaining control of the Democratic party by 1898.
20th century
During the 20th century, civil rights of African Americans became a central issue. Before 1964 African American citizens in the South were treated as second class citizens with minimal political rights.1948: Dixiecrat revolt
Many Southern Democrats rejected the 1948 Democratic political platform over President Harry's Truman's civil rights platform. They met at Birmingham, Alabama, and formed a political party named the "States' Rights" Democratic Party, more commonly known as the "Dixiecrats." Its main goal was to continue the policy of racial segregation in the South and the Jim Crow laws that sustained it. South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, who had led the walkout, became the party's presidential nominee. Mississippi Governor Fielding L. Wright received the vice-presidential nomination. Thurmond had a moderate position in South Carolina politics, but with his allegiance with the Dixiecrats, he became the symbol of die-hard segregation. The Dixiecrats had no chance of winning the election since they failed to qualify for the ballots of enough states. Their strategy was to win enough Southern states to deny Truman an electoral college victory and force the election into the House of Representatives, where they could then extract concessions from either Truman or his opponent Thomas Dewey on racial issues in exchange for their support. Even if Dewey won the election outright, the Dixiecrats hoped that their defection would show that the Democratic Party needed Southern support to win national elections, and that this fact would weaken the Civil Rights Movement among Northern and Western Democrats. However, the Dixiecrats were weakened when most Southern Democratic leaders refused to support the party. In the November election, Thurmond carried the states of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Outside of these four states, however, it was only listed as a third-party ticket. Thurmond received well over a million popular votes and 39 electoral votes.Civil Rights Movement
Between 1955 and 1968, a movement towards desegregation began to take place in the American South. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were highly influential in carrying out a strategy of non-violent protests and demonstrations. African American churches were prominent in organizing their congregations for leadership and protest. Protesters rallied against racial laws, at events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Selma to Montgomery marches, the Birmingham campaign, the Greensboro sit-in of 1960 and the March on Washington in 1963.Legal changes came in the mid-1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress. It ended legal segregation. He also pushed through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which set strict rules for protecting the right of African Americans to vote. This law has since been used to protect equal rights for women as well as all minorities.
The South becomes Republican
For nearly a century after Reconstruction, the white South identified with the Democratic Party. Republicans controlled parts of the mountains districts and they competed for statewide office in the border states. Before 1948, southern Democrats believed that their party, with its respect for states' rights and appreciation of traditional southern values, was the defender of the southern way of life. Southern Democrats warned against designs on the part of northern liberals and Republicans and civil rights activists whom they denounced as "outside agitators".The adoption of the first civil rights plank by the 1948 convention and President Truman's Executive Order 9981, which provided for equal treatment and opportunity for African-American military service members, divided the party's northern and southern wings. In 1952, the Democratic Party named John Sparkman, a moderate Senator from Alabama, as their vice presidential candidate with the hope of building party loyalty in the South. By the late 1950s, the national Democratic Party again began to embrace the Civil Rights Movement, and the old argument that Southern whites had to vote for Democrats to protect segregation grew weaker. Modernization had brought factories, national businesses and a more diverse culture to cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte and Houston. This attracted millions of northern migrants, including many African Americans. They gave priority to modernization and economic growth over preservation of the old ways.
The Civil Rights act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed by bipartisan majorities of northern congressmen. Only a small element resisted, led by Democratic governors Lester Maddox of Georgia, and especially George Wallace of Alabama. These populist governors appealed to a less-educated, blue-collar electorate that favored the Democratic Party, but supported segregation. After the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that outlawed segregation in schools in 1954, integration caused enormous controversy in the white South. For this reason, compliance was very slow and was the subject of violent resistance in some areas.
The Democratic Party no longer acted as the champion of segregation. Newly-enfranchised African American voters began supporting Democratic candidates at the 80-90-percent levels, producing Democratic leaders such as Julian Bond and John Lewis of Georgia, and Barbara Jordan of Texas.
Many white southerners switched to the Republican Party, some for reasons unrelated to race. The majority of white southerners shared conservative positions on taxes, moral values and national security. The Democratic Party had increasingly liberal positions rejected by these voters. In addition, the younger generations, who were politically conservative but wealthier and less attached to the Democratic Party, replaced the older generations who remained loyal to the party. The shift to the Republican Party took place slowly and gradually over almost a century.
By the 1990s Republicans were starting to win elections at the statewide and local level throughout the South, even though Democrats retained majorities in several state legislatures through the 2000s and 2010s. By 2014, the region was heavily Republican at the local, state and national level. A key element in the change was the transformation of evangelical white Protestants in the south from largely nonpolitical to heavily Republican. Pew pollsters reported, "In the late 1980s, white evangelicals in the South were still mostly wedded to the Democratic Party while evangelicals outside the South were more aligned with the GOP. But over the course of the next decade or so, the GOP made gains among white Southerners generally and evangelicals in particular, virtually eliminating this regional disparity." Exit polls in the 2004 presidential election showed that Republican George W. Bush led Democrat John Kerry by 70–30% among Southern whites, who comprised 71% of the voters there. By contrast, Kerry had a 90–9 lead among the 18% of African American Southern voters. One-third of the Southern voters said they were white evangelicals; they voted for Bush by 80–20.
After the 2016 election, every state legislature in the South was GOP-controlled. Republican nominee for President Donald Trump notably won Elliott County, Kentucky, becoming the first Republican nominee for President to ever win that county.