Could the Democrats have regained power in all Southern States post-Reagan?

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As the title says, could the Democrats have regained power in the South (south of the Mason-Dixon line) at the Presidential level and state level after Ronald Reagan?

Like, more than just Bill Clinton's win in a few Southern states in 1992 and 1996? Like totally, they win the South's electoral votes wholesale and their statewide offices without getting replaced by the GOP?
 
Last edited:

manav95

Banned
Yes if they nominated Lloyd Bentsen along with some other Southern guy like Robert Byrd or Ernest Hollings. And then proceed to reach out to both blacks and whites in the South in an attempt to sweep the South.
 
Besides Arkansas, what do all the states Clinton won in '92 have in common? Big cities. We have also seen Virginia go solid blue as well as NC and FL go for Obama, so we know individual states can and will go blue for the right candidate.

So the Dems would need someone young, charismatic, and Southern, and also someone who appeals to city-dwellers and is scandal-proof. And someone who has cred with minorities but is himself white. Basically, Bill Clinton without the scandals and with even more charisma, and possibly a Latino running mate.

That candidate would have the most trouble in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, so they should be from one of those states and perhaps a graduate of a university in another. So if New Clinton, an Arkansan, ran with Bill Richardson, sporting a degree from Ole Miss and a fandom for their football team, and he spoke so as to appeal to younger city-dwellers, he could win at least close to the entire former CSA.
 
Some very quick points:

1. What is your definition of "the South"?

2. Deep South (defined as SC, GA, AL, MS, and LA, though you can also include eastern TX and northern FL if you want) have a history of bloc voting that actually goes back to before the Civil War. Historically, the Upper South has often aligned with the five Deep South states but the voting patterns are much more in line with the rest of the country.

3. Some electoral history:

1896 -first post Reconstruction presidential election where the Republican candidate won any former slave states

1920 -first post Reconstruction presidential election where the Republican candidate won any former Confederate states (TN)

1928 -Al Smith, the Democratic candidate, carries only the five state Deep South bloc, plus Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. He gets beat by Hoover in Texas, Florida, and the Upper South apart from Arkansas

1932-1944 -last presidential elections where the Democratic candidate carried every former Confederate (or former slave) state

1948- last presidential election where the Republican candidate failed to carry a single state in the former CSA. But the five state Deep South bloc, ex-Georgia, goes for Thurmond, not Truman.

1956 -first presidential election where the Republican candidate carries one of the Deep South five (LA). But Stevenson still wins the rest of the Deep South, plus three other states, despite getting beaten by something like 15% nationwide.

1964 -The Republican candidate, Goldwater carries all five Deep South states plus his native state of Arizona. He gets beaten by over 20% nationwide.

1972 -first presidential election in US history where the Democratic candidate fails to carry a single state in the former Confederacy. Nixon sweeps.

1976 -Carter wins every state in the former CSA except Virginia for the Democrats. This is the last election where the Democratic candidate "won" the CSA.

1984-8 Second and third Republican sweeps of the former Confederate states in a presidential election

2000-04 Fourth and fifth Republican sweeps of the former Confederate states in a presidential election

The above timeline carries a mass of admittedly somewhat cherrypicked data, but the point is that the re-alignment in the was well underway before Reagan, at the presidential level.

The Upper South starts detaching itself from the "Solid South" bloc in the 1920s. Since then there has not been all that much difference between how these states voted (AR, TN, NC, VA plus the border states of MO, KY, WV, MD, and DE) and how the rest of the country voted. Texas and Florida break away first in 1928 and then more definitively in the 1950s. Texas develops its own voting pattern, particular to Texas, and with Florida it depends on where the most recent group of arrivals in the state come from and how they have voted.

The five Deep South states try backing some regional candidates, but by 1964 are pretty much in the GoP camp, except for Wallace in 1968 and Carter in 1976. A few times Georgia, and even more rarely Louisiana will break from the bloc. South Carolina backed Nixon over Wallace in 1968 but that is it. I don't think Alabama and Mississippi have backed different presidential candidates in any election in US history.

Carter was actually the only President in US history from the Deep South, and that includes northern Florida and eastern Texas (I don't think you should count the Bushes), and may have been the only major party presidential nominee from that group of states, though I'm not sure about this. There have been lots of presidents from AR-TN-NC-VA. Carter's election was actually as anomalous as Kennedy's and had a similar effect. If you look at state by state popular vote totals, he was also more competitive than most modern Democratic presidential candidates in 1980. But you can't just keep nominating southern pols, though there was something of a push within the party to do just that.
 
Besides Arkansas, what do all the states Clinton won in '92 have in common? Big cities. We have also seen Virginia go solid blue as well as NC and FL go for Obama, so we know individual states can and will go blue for the right candidate.

So the Dems would need someone young, charismatic, and Southern, and also someone who appeals to city-dwellers and is scandal-proof. And someone who has cred with minorities but is himself white. Basically, Bill Clinton without the scandals and with even more charisma, and possibly a Latino running mate.

That candidate would have the most trouble in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, so they should be from one of those states and perhaps a graduate of a university in another. So if New Clinton, an Arkansan, ran with Bill Richardson, sporting a degree from Ole Miss and a fandom for their football team, and he spoke so as to appeal to younger city-dwellers, he could win at least close to the entire former CSA.

Can the Democrats continue this winning streak in the South and regain the entire South's electoral votes and statewide officed until the present day?

Some very quick points:

1. What is your definition of "the South"?

2. Deep South (defined as SC, GA, AL, MS, and LA, though you can also include eastern TX and northern FL if you want) have a history of bloc voting that actually goes back to before the Civil War. Historically, the Upper South has often aligned with the five Deep South states but the voting patterns are much more in line with the rest of the country.

3. Some electoral history:

1896 -first post Reconstruction presidential election where the Republican candidate won any former slave states

1920 -first post Reconstruction presidential election where the Republican candidate won any former Confederate states (TN)

1928 -Al Smith, the Democratic candidate, carries only the five state Deep South bloc, plus Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. He gets beat by Hoover in Texas, Florida, and the Upper South apart from Arkansas

1932-1944 -last presidential elections where the Democratic candidate carried every former Confederate (or former slave) state

1948- last presidential election where the Republican candidate failed to carry a single state in the former CSA. But the five state Deep South bloc, ex-Georgia, goes for Thurmond, not Truman.

1956 -first presidential election where the Republican candidate carries one of the Deep South five (LA). But Stevenson still wins the rest of the Deep South, plus three other states, despite getting beaten by something like 15% nationwide.

1964 -The Republican candidate, Goldwater carries all five Deep South states plus his native state of Arizona. He gets beaten by over 20% nationwide.

1972 -first presidential election in US history where the Democratic candidate fails to carry a single state in the former Confederacy. Nixon sweeps.

1976 -Carter wins every state in the former CSA except Virginia for the Democrats. This is the last election where the Democratic candidate "won" the CSA.

1984-8 Second and third Republican sweeps of the former Confederate states in a presidential election

2000-04 Fourth and fifth Republican sweeps of the former Confederate states in a presidential election

The above timeline carries a mass of admittedly somewhat cherrypicked data, but the point is that the re-alignment in the was well underway before Reagan, at the presidential level.

The Upper South starts detaching itself from the "Solid South" bloc in the 1920s. Since then there has not been all that much difference between how these states voted (AR, TN, NC, VA plus the border states of MO, KY, WV, MD, and DE) and how the rest of the country voted. Texas and Florida break away first in 1928 and then more definitively in the 1950s. Texas develops its own voting pattern, particular to Texas, and with Florida it depends on where the most recent group of arrivals in the state come from and how they have voted.

The five Deep South states try backing some regional candidates, but by 1964 are pretty much in the GoP camp, except for Wallace in 1968 and Carter in 1976. A few times Georgia, and even more rarely Louisiana will break from the bloc. South Carolina backed Nixon over Wallace in 1968 but that is it. I don't think Alabama and Mississippi have backed different presidential candidates in any election in US history.

Carter was actually the only President in US history from the Deep South, and that includes northern Florida and eastern Texas (I don't think you should count the Bushes), and may have been the only major party presidential nominee from that group of states, though I'm not sure about this. There have been lots of presidents from AR-TN-NC-VA. Carter's election was actually as anomalous as Kennedy's and had a similar effect. If you look at state by state popular vote totals, he was also more competitive than most modern Democratic presidential candidates in 1980. But you can't just keep nominating southern pols, though there was something of a push within the party to do just that.

South meaning yes, the entire former Confederacy, including TX-OK-LA-MS-AL-GA-SC-NC-VA-KY-MO.

And the premise of the OP is like the Democrats regaining power in the South after the conservative Reagan Revolution during the 1980s, which was considered to have finally put the South in the GOP fold.

So in the OP, the Democrats reverse that post-Reagan.

Bonus: Democrats still have wide appeal to white working class (WWC) voters in the OP. Is this even possible?

By the way, I tweaked the OP to adjust to all answers in this thread.
 

manav95

Banned
Can the Democrats continue this winning streak in the South and regain the entire South's electoral votes and statewide officed until the present day?



South meaning yes, the entire former Confederacy, including TX-OK-LA-MS-AL-GA-SC-NC-VA-KY-MO.

And the premise of the OP is like the Democrats regaining power in the South after the conservative Reagan Revolution during the 1980s, which was considered to have finally put the South in the GOP fold.

So in the OP, the Democrats reverse that post-Reagan.

Bonus: Democrats still have wide appeal to white working class (WWC) voters in the OP. Is this even possible?

By the way, I tweaked the OP to adjust to all answers in this thread.

Yeah if the new Democrats like Gore and Pelosi don't rise to power. I think if Ted Kennedy and his fellow liberals took control of the party and maybe won in 1988, it would have hindered the rise of the DLC. This caused Democrats to focus on appealing to affluent white suburban voters instead of WWC voters, essentially writing them off.
 

manav95

Banned
Didn't Bill Clinton have the best performance with WWC since LBJ?

Well he only won them back temporarily due to his charisma and actually being one of them from Arkansas. Notice that in the 1994 midterms, they bolted to the GOP and enabled them to take Congress. And the House remained Republican until 2007.
 
It's going to be hard. The Deep South has historically had racially polarized voting if there is bi-racial voting. There will be a white party and a black party. As long as the Democrats need Northern black votes and the Civil Rights/Voting Rights Act passes, getting deep South states to vote for the national party that is friendly/friendlier to black people in the North will be damn tough. Local Democrats were able to hang on through the 2000s even as local races began to nationalize through being able to better fit their districts and better able to deliver local political goods. But there is a fundamental tension between a party that needs Northeastern, Upper Midwest and West Coast urban voters appealing to Deep Southern white voters at the same time at the national level.
 
It's going to be hard. The Deep South has historically had racially polarized voting if there is bi-racial voting. There will be a white party and a black party. As long as the Democrats need Northern black votes and the Civil Rights/Voting Rights Act passes, getting deep South states to vote for the national party that is friendly/friendlier to black people in the North will be damn tough. Local Democrats were able to hang on through the 2000s even as local races began to nationalize through being able to better fit their districts and better able to deliver local political goods. But there is a fundamental tension between a party that needs Northeastern, Upper Midwest and West Coast urban voters appealing to Deep Southern white voters at the same time at the national level.

I remember Georgia Democrats under Carter in the 1970s tried to do this thing. How can anyone make a POD that manages to do that for all Democrats at the national level?
 
3rd party spoiler for the gop

Well, there was Perot in 1992 and 1996--granted, he took votes from both parties, but at least in the South, he almost certainly hurt the Republicans more than the Democrats, since he got few votes among African Americans, who made up the Democrats' core voters in the South. Yet in spite of this, and in spite of Clinton being a southerner with a southern running mate, in both the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections the Democrats only won four of the eleven ex-Confederate states.

Anyway, it's not as though the South was solidly Democratic in the decades *before* Reagan. Only Carter's near-sweep of the region in the 1976 presidential election could give this misleading impression. But 1976 was unique--the Democrats nominating their first presidential candidate from the Deep South since before the ACW (no, I don't count Wilson), the GOP badly split by the Reagan challenge to Ford (which did especially well in the South, except for Florida and Tennessee), the effects of Watergate, etc. And even in 1976, Carter lost Virginia, and only won narrowly in Mississippi and Texas (and fairly narrowly in Florida and Louisiana).

In any event, Republicans had won substantial numbers of southern states in the presidential elections of 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972. They had elected senators since 1961 (with John Tower's victory in Texas) and governors since 1966 (Winthrop Rockefeller in Arkansas and Claude Kirk in Florida.) So for the Democrats to sweep the South after Reagan would require something more than just reverting to pre-Reagan voting patterns (though even that is pretty unlikely). It would really require going back to 1948 or 1944 (depending whether you count the Dixiecrats as a split in the Democratic Party or as a third party).
 
Sweeping the South? Pretty much impossible. The various Southern states are too different from one another, so you need different Democrats in different states. Note that Obama won VA, NC, and Florida. Clinton won only Florida out of those states. His other wins were Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia, none of which went for Obama.

For lower offices, Al-Abama and Texas might be the hardest rows to hoe. As recently as 2008, the Democrats took 3 of Mississippi's 4 House seats. Louisiana's current governor is a Democrat.
 
The shift of Southern white support from the Democratic to the Republican Party was often generational-Bill Clinton did the best with elderly voters in many of these states for example. Once the Greatest Generation (which nationally was unusually liberal also) died off you saw a decisive shift towards the GOP in the first decade of the millennium. That said, I don't think it was necessarily inevitable that the non-metropolitan Southern white vote would collapse so completely with the concurrent loss of Congressional seats and state/local-level offices. I think if you'd had a worse 2008 recession combined with a far more robust stimulus plan and possibly a tactical decision to pursue healthcare reform after the 2010 midterms, you could avoid a Republican wave that year.
 
The Democrats have to drop environmentalism to remain competitive in KY, WV, and TN. Those states on average were populist and anti-war during the Bush years and still went more for McCain in 08 than Kerry in 04.

Alabama needs to have an industrial manufacturing base to remain for the Dems to have a chance there, and the party needs to remain connected with them. Mississippi losing their patronage and pork baron Senator Cochran, combined with a deeply religious, populist, and socially conservative state Democrat party, might give the Democrats a chance there.

Virginia and Georgia going New South 10 years earlier than OTL would help.

The big issue is South Carolina. The only way I see it happening is if Strom stays a Democrat and the upstate region becomes a New South enclave rather than a conservative sprawl of a suburb.
 
Well he only won them back temporarily due to his charisma and actually being one of them from Arkansas. Notice that in the 1994 midterms, they bolted to the GOP and enabled them to take Congress. And the House remained Republican until 2007.

It was his charisma but also that he actually ran on a populist message ("I feel your pain"). When he went back on this in office and actually governed as a pro Wall Street centrist it alienated working class people (though the effect of that was more that they just stopped voting rather than switching outright to the GOP).
 
No. Simply no. The Democrats would have to become the Dixiecrats even to have a hope in Hell. That would cost them much of the rest of the country. Republican adoption of social conservatism and subliminal racism (Crime on the Streets, Willy Horton) has cost them rock-ribbed Republican areas of yore - Oregon, Washington, New England. BME votes in the Mid-west have also made that area more reliably Democratic. Why even try to give that up? The Republicans haven't won the presidency with a landslide since 1988, just as the Tories haven't in the UK since 1987.
 
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