For many generations – nearly a century – the states making up the deep south accounted for a powerful Democrat-voting bloc. Today however, this traditionally reliable support base is largely the reserve of the Republican Party. How did this voter demographic switch – and so drastically?
The following piece will look at the history of the solid south, how it switched, and its uncertain future.
Early Days
The Solid South first developed in the aftermath of the American Civil War, with the reintegrated ex-Confederate slave states voting Democrat from 1876.
That year, Democratic nominee Samuel Tilden scored a whitewash across the deep south in the presidential election. The only deep southern state he did not win was Louisiana, with this year marking the last time until 1956 that a Republican would win the state.
So why and how did this happen?
In the 1870s, several paramilitary white racist groups, most famously the Ku Klux Klan, rebelled against the new-found rights given to African-Americans. These groups use of violence to intimidate voters (sometimes including lynching) and the efforts of elected Democratic officials in the south meant that many states disenfranchised black voters. By the early 20th century, every southern state had effectively removed black voters from the electorate under discriminatory Jim Crow laws.
The Democrats would retain the South during the 19th century, whether the party nominated conservative Grover Cleveland or progressive William Jennings Bryan.
Exceptions To The Rule
The Solid South held for the Democrats for nearly a century. That said, there were exceptions to the rule, with Republicans sometimes pulling off an upset.
In the 1920 Republican landslide, Warren G. Harding picked up both Oklahoma and Tennessee, the latter of which marked the first time a Republican won an ex-Confederate state since the end of the Reconstruction Era.
Eight years later, in the 1928 landslide, then-beloved Republican Herbert Hoover won Tennessee, North Carolina (the last Republican to do so until 1968), and even Texas – the latter of which Democrats won with 73% of the vote to the Republicans’s under 20% the previous election. Plus, victory in Florida marked the first win for the Democrats since 1876. This impressive Republican performance was partly due to southern opposition to Democrat Al Smith’s support of Prohibition and Catholic faith.
After soundly backing Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1932-1944, 1948 saw several southern states vote for the new States’ Rights Party. These “Dixiecrats”, headed up by infamous segregationist Strom Thurmond, were ex-Democrats who split from the party, walking out of the convention in opposition to President Truman’s pro-civil rights plank. The four states the party won were South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Truman’s win made him the first Democrat to win the White House without South Carolina since 1836 and the first-ever Democrat to emerge victorious without carrying Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana.
In 1952, Second World War icon and Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower took several southern states such as Florida, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Most notable however was “Ike”’s win in Texas, where the Texas-born nominee – supported by the Texas Democratic Party – became the first individual to win over one million votes in the state. When re-elected in 1956, he further picked up the southern states of Louisiana and Kentucky.
1960 saw Southern Democrat Harry Byrd win the states of Mississippi and Alabama after garnering votes from unpledged electors. Whereas, Republican Richard Nixon carried Tennessee and Oklahoma, with John F. Kennedy becoming the first Democrat to win an election whilst having lost Florida.
1964: A Turning Point In Losing The South For A Generation
Although, as seen, the Solid South was not unassailable, it was a major barrier for Republicans – that was until 1964.
That year, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act 1964, a strongly-resisted move in the south, so much so that the President reportedly remarked to an aide that his party had “lost the south for a generation.”
Furthermore, Johnson’s opponent, Republican Barry Goldwater, was in line with southern values. Not only did he vote against the Civil Rights Act but he was also pro-states’ rights and against the increasing size of the federal government.
See similar: “Daisy”: The History of A Landmark Political Attack Ad
In the election, Goldwater split the south, picking up the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi.
Mississippi is a good case for seeing the southern party switch. A state won by FDR with 97% of the vote in 1932, by 1964, the Republicans had taken the territory, with Goldwater winning 87% of the vote share. At the time, over 95% of the electorate opposed the Civil Rights Act. Meanwhile, in Alabama, President Johnson was not even on the ballot.
However, the realignment was not totally complete. For example, the Democrats still won in Texas, President Johnson’s home state. Despite Johnson being Kennedy’s running mate in 1960, Democrats only just won the state on that occasion.
1972: The Transition Is Completed
In 1968, Republican Richard Nixon picked up some southern states although several were won by pro-segregation populist and ex-Democrat George Wallace, running for the American Independence Party. The Democratic Party notably retained Texas, even if by a margin of less than 1.3%.
The south was slipping away from the Democrats – as they had their worst results in the south in 100 years – but not quite yet Republican territory.
In 1972, the Democrats nominated radical liberal George McGovern in a move that would help shift the south to the Republicans. Conservative Richard Nixon is commonly cited as having developed a “Southern Strategy” of winning over white voters through his strong states’ right stance and law and order messaging.
Nixon won convincingly across the south just as he did across the country.
Among the notable results were in Arkansas, where Republicans won the state for the first time in a century. In Georgia – a state won by George Wallace in 1968 – Nixon won by 75% of the vote (and 90% of the white vote), whilst the state too had the most Republican county in the nation with Dade County voting for Nixon by 93.5%.
In Mississippi, the Democrats won less than 20% of the vote – an idea unthinkable a few decades earlier when Democrats regularly won over 80% or 90% of the vote. Nixon too won South Carolina by over 70%; in 1936, Roosevelt won it by 98.5%, Woodrow Wilson won it by 96%, and Al Smith by over 90% in the 1928 Republican landslide.
In all, Nixon won 79% of the southern white vote whilst receiving 86% of the white vote in the Deep South.
Bucking The Trend: Southern Democrats
Although Republicans have more or less nailed down the solid south as a reliable voter base, there are two major exemptions from Democrats who managed to crack the bloc and both were southern boys.
In 1976, the Democrats nominated Jimmy Carter, the former Governor of Georgia for president. He was the first major party candidate from the Deep South since 1848.
In the election, Carter would win 10/11 southern states. In Arkansas, he won by over 30% whilst he managed to flip every county in Georgia Democratic after Nixon won comprehensively the previous cycle. In those two states and Tennessee, Carter won a majority of the white vote. It was also the last election where Texas was carried by a Democrat.
1992 saw the Democrats opt for Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton as their nominee. The charismatic southerner would win states such as Louisiana and Georgia. He would win his home state by over 50%; due to strong competition from third party candidate Ross Perot, it was the only state won by a majority rather than plurality. In 1996, he would capture the state of Florida too.
Additionally, he chose Tennessee Senator Al Gore as his running mate. Most southern Congressman were Democrats up until the 1994 Republican Revolution when the majority were Republicans for the first time.
The Future of the Red Wall
Although the days of literacy tests and poll taxes are over, southern states are still Republican-dominated due to moves such as strict voter ID laws and gerrymandering, moves often use to disproportionately impact Democratic-supporting minorities.
That said, the south is not firmly Republican territory.
A good instance to prove this is the case of Georgia in 2020.
Indeed, that year, Democrat Joe Biden was able to win the state – admittedly by a razor-thin 12,000 votes – to become the first non-southern Democrat to carry a Deep South state since 1960.
This was made possible by the increasingly urban Atlanta, whose population increase had helped out Biden, who had the backing of 83% of black voters.
They were doubtlessly too aided by pouring money into the state. Former President Barack Obama made in-person speeches while The New York Times credited former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams for “inspir[ing] an estimated 800,000 residents to register to vote.”
Elsewhere, Florida has become a rather different matter from the rest of the southern US. Today, the Sunshine State has become regarded as more of a swing state, crucial in deciding the 2000 election and won by Obama in 2008 and 2012. That said, in 2020, a Republican won a majority of votes for the first time since 2004 whilst gubernatorial results in the 21st century have only returned Republicans.
Meanwhile, Texas – once seen as indisputable Republican territory – has become a looser hold for the party. At the start of the 21st century, George Bush was able to win the state by over 20%, dropping to 12% in 2008, falling to 10 in 2016, and finally 5.5% in 2020 – the latter of which saw the Democrats win the highest vote share since Jimmy Carter.
This is not to say that the Red Wall in the south is under threat but we are entering an era where that area is not taken for granted.
GRIFFIN KAYE.
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