scholarly journals From Strom to Barack: Race, Ideology, and the Transformation of the Southern Party System

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Alan I. Abramowitz
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Racial Composition ◽  
The South ◽  
Hispanic Voters ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Race Ideology

The southern party system has undergone a dramatic transformation since the 1960s, a transformation that has affected both the electoral bases of the parties and their leadership. This transformation has involved two related trends-a shift in the racial composition of the Democratic Party at the mass and elite levels and an ideological realignment that has produced a much wider gap between the ideological orientations and policy preferences of Democratic and Republican leaders and voters. In the South, to an even greater extent than in the rest of the nation, the Democratic Party has become increasingly dependent on the support of nonwhite voters. Meanwhile, despite the growing size of the nonwhite electorate in the South, the Republican base has remained overwhelmingly white. The growing dependence of the Democratic Party in the South on African-American and more recently Hispanic votes has contributed to the party's increasing liberalism because African-American and Hispanic voters tend to strongly support activist government. And this trend has also contributed to the growing conservatism of the Republican base as conservative whites have continued to flee the Democratic Party for the GOP. As a result, the two-party system in the South now consists of a Democratic Party dominated by nonwhites and white liberals and a Republican Party dominated by white conservatives.

How Texas Turned Red

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-108
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The South ◽  
Dormant State ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explains how Texas came to align with the Republican Party. Texas is now the essential Republican state, but for most of its history it was part of the solid Democratic South. In the mid-twentieth century, the Texas Democratic Party divided into liberal and conservative factions—partly over race and civil rights but also over a range of questions including New Deal economic policies and anti-communism. Texas Democrats engaged in what V. O. Key called the most intense intraparty fight of any state in the South. The long-dormant state Republican Party began to revive in the 1960s as many Texans became alienated from a national Democratic Party that was shifting to the left. Republican gains produced a period of balanced two-party competition that lasted from the 1970s through the 1990s. By the early 2000s, the GOP established dominance, making Texas the nation’s largest and most powerful Republican state.

Critical Perspectives: Did Prosperity Contribute to the South's Abandonment of the Democratic Party?

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-432
Author(s):  
W. J. Rorabaugh
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
The South ◽  
George Bush ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Generation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Critical Perspectives

During the past generation the South largely has abandoned its traditional commitment to the Democratic Party and emerged as an increasingly strong bastion of the Republican party. In 2004, George Bush won 58 percent in the South but only 48 percent in the rest of the country. (Throughout this article the South is defined as the former Confederate states plus Kentucky and Oklahoma.) In contrast, as recently as 1960, John Kennedy carried the South; excluding the South, Nixon beat Kennedy. The South's commitment to the Democrats lasted more than 150 years, from the days of Thomas Jefferson until the 1960s. How, then, do we explain the decline of the Democrats and the rise of the Republicans in the South in the past forty years?

The Paradox of Partisanship

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-57
Author(s):  
Lee Drutman
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
The Right ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

This chapter examines the paradox of partisanship. In 1950, the American Political Science Association put out a major report arguing for a “more responsible two-party system.” The two parties—the Democratic Party and the Republican Party—were then largely indistinguishable coalitions of parochial local parties, and the political scientists argued that too little, rather than too much polarization, was the problem. This sets up a paradox: Some party division is necessary, but too much can be deadly. Various traditions in American political thought have tried to resolve this paradox. Antipartisans have urged consensus above all. Responsible partisans have urged competition above all. Meanwhile, bipartisans have urged compromise above all. Consensus is impossible. However, both compromise and competition are essential to democracy. Only the neglected multiparty tradition can solve the paradox with the right balance of competition and compromise.

Policy preferences and party switching: Evidence from the 2012 Japanese election

2020 ◽  
pp. 135406882094977
Author(s):  
Jordan Hamzawi
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political History ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Lower House ◽  
Break Up ◽  
Systematic Understanding ◽  
Ruling Party

In 2012, despite controlling more than 60% of all seats in Japan’s lower house, the Democratic Party of Japan had roughly 100 legislators switch parties. The break-up proved so disastrous that the DPJ went defunct and Japan’s steadily developing two-party system utterly collapsed, marking one of the most momentous events in recent Japanese political history. However, there is little systematic understanding what produced this outcome. I leverage a dataset of candidate policy preferences in order to pinpoint what led politicians to take the dramatic step of leaving the ruling party. Through factor analysis and logistic regression, I find that DPJ incumbents with policy preferences significantly different from their party were especially likely to switch and that those preferences predict the party they ultimately chose.

scholarly journals South Carolina: Party Development in the Palmetto State

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 91-108
Author(s):  
Robert P. Steed ◽  
Laurence W. Moreland
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Party Development ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Partisan Realignment ◽  
Local Party

Paralleling developments in other southern states over the past three to four decades, South Carolina’s political system has undergone dramatic change. One of the more significant components of this change has been the partisan realignment from a one-party system dominated by the Democrats to a competitive two-party system in which Republicans have come to hold the upper hand. This increased electoral competitiveness has been accompanied by an increased organizational effort by both parties in the state. An examination of local party activists in 2001 points to a continuation of this pattern over the past ten years. In comparison with data from the 1991 Southern Grassroots Party Activists Survey, the 2001 data show the following: (1) the Republican Party has sustained its electoral and organizational gains of recent years; (2) the parties continue to attract activists who differ across party lines on a number of important demographic and socioeconomic variables; (3) there has been a continued sorting of political orientations and cues marked by sharply different inter-party ideological and issue positions; (4) the Democratic Party has become more ideologically homogeneous and more in line with the national party than previously; and (5) since 1991 perceptions of factionalism have declined in both parties, but still remain higher among Democrats than among Republicans.

scholarly journals Southern Politics After the Election of Presidential Clinton: Continued Transformation Toward the Republican Party?

1993 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles D. Hadley
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Politics ◽  
Southern State ◽  
White House ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Democratic Vote

To whom does the South belong politically, now that an all-southern ticket has reclaimed the White House for the Democratic party? Review of 1992 voting returns for national, statewide, and legislative races in the South, contrasted with those from earlier presidential years, lead to only one conclusion: the South continues to move toward the Republican party. The Clinton-Gore ticket ran behind its percentage of the national vote in most southern states, as well as behind all Democratic candidates in statewide races, and would have won without any southern electoral votes; whereas Bush-Quayle ran ahead of their percentage of the national vote in every southern state except Clinton’s Arkansas, while Republicans gained seats in southern legislatures and congressional delegations. It is suggested that southern electoral college votes won by Democratic presidential candidates in 1976 and 1992 hinged upon Democratic vote-getters in races for statewide offices in each state carried except the presidential candidates’ home states.

Partisan Tumult on the Floor: The Speakership Elections of 1849 and 1855–1856

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffery A. Jenkins ◽  
Charles Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Congressional Elections ◽  
Whig Party ◽  
New Parties ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Party

This chapter examines the speakership elections of 1849 and 1855–1856, the most chaotic instances of officer selection in the history of the House of Representatives. It considers how the Second Party System weakened and eventually collapsed as the slavery issue overwhelmed the interregional partisanship that had been in place for two decades. It also discusses the emergence of new political parties, such as the Free-Soil Party, the American Party, and the Republican Party, that created new avenues for coalitional organization. In particular, it looks at the rise of the Republican Party as the primary opposition party to the Democrats. Finally, it describes how the rising popularity of the new parties in congressional elections affected politicians in both the Whig Party and the Democratic Party.

The Rise of Political Action Committees

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily J. Charnock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Action Committees ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Conservative Coalition ◽  
American Party

This book explores the origins of political action committees (PACs) in the mid-twentieth century and their impact on the American party system. It argues that PACs were envisaged, from the outset, as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties, thus helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today. It shows how the very first PAC, created by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1943, explicitly set out to liberalize the Democratic Party by channeling campaign resources to liberal Democrats while trying to defeat conservative Southern Democrats. This organizational model and strategy of “dynamic partisanship” subsequently diffused through the interest group world—imitated first by other labor and liberal allies in the 1940s and 1950s, then adopted and inverted by business and conservative groups in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Previously committed to the “conservative coalition” of Southern Democrats and northern Republicans, the latter groups came to embrace a more partisan approach and created new PACs to help refashion the Republican Party into a conservative counterweight. The book locates this PAC mobilization in the larger story of interest group electioneering, which went from a rare and highly controversial practice at the beginning of the twentieth century to a ubiquitous phenomenon today. It also offers a fuller picture of PACs as not only financial vehicles but electoral innovators that pioneered strategies and tactics that have come to pervade modern US campaigns and helped transform the American party system.

Democrats in the South: The Race Question

2008 ◽  
pp. 503-512
Author(s):  
John Roy Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Active Part ◽  
The South ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
Official Recognition ◽  
Do So

This chapter explores how, when John Roy Lynch came to Chicago, whether or not he should take an active part in politics was one of the first questions that occurred to him. He had no intention of actively participating politically in local matters, but it occurred to him that like some other retired army officers, he could, with propriety, take an active part in national matters. But after going over the field very carefully, Lynch found that conditions nationally, as well as locally, were not such as would justify him in doing so. In fact, beginning with the unfortunate administration of President William Howard Taft, the colored American had no standing with either of the two major parties. The Democratic party, nationally, was still a white man's party and, beginning with the Taft administration, the Republican party was no longer a champion of human rights. In fact, the policy inaugurated by President Taft was equivalent to transforming the Republican party, as far as it was in the power of an administration to do so, into a race proscriptive party. In other words, racial identity regardless of merit was made a bar to official recognition.

Migrant Magnets: How Movers Change the Politics of Their New Homes and the Places They Leave: The Cases of People of Blacks and Latinos

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-160
Author(s):  
Irwin L. Morris
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
High Growth ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Southern Politics ◽  
Migratory Patterns

Just as at predicts movers influence the partisan attachments and ideological orientations of white stayers, movers and stayers theory leads us to expect stayers of color to respond to movers and the broader population growth (and decline) their migratory patterns produce. However, the effects on people of color are likely to be subtler than the effects among white stayers. Likewise, people of color are likely to respond differently to community decline than whites because their baseline attachments to the Democratic Party are much stronger. African American stayers in declining communities maintain their attachment to the Democratic Party rather than shifting toward the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. In high-growth areas, African American stayers also become more ideologically progressive. While results for Latinos are more muted, the strikingly large proportion of Latino stayers in high-growth communities—and high-growth states—suggests they will be an increasingly important facet of 21st-century southern politics.

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