Draft:Party realignment in the United States

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Following Reconstruction the Democrats overwhelmingly won the white vote in the south, but following World War II the party saw its share of the white vote decline. Following Democratic strategies in the south were based on winning around two-fifths of the white vote and almost the entirety of the black vote.

In 1932, less than 10% of the voting population in the peripheral south and less than 20% in the deep south lived in metropolitan areas. By 1956, metropolitan areas accounted for less than 40% and 30% respectively. This rose to around 60% and 40% respectively by 1976.

Fourteen of the eighteen Democratic senators from the South voted against extending the Voting Rights Act in 1970. However, an increase in newer members led to nine voting to extend it in 1975, while five voted against it. In 1982, all Democratic senators from the South, including Russell B. Long and John C. Stennis, voted to extend the legislation for twenty-five years. Earl Black and Merle Black stated that southern senators Dale Bumpers, Wyche Fowler, Bob Graham, Mark Pryor, Terry Sanford, and Jim Sasser were voting as or more liberal than the national party in the 1980s.

Realignment in the 20th century
Jack Germond and Jules Witcover wrote in 1989, that the "Eastern Liberal Establishment so influential in the 1950s and 1960s was now just a memory" and that the Republican Party was now "monolithically conservative".

Congress
Between 1860 and 1930, the Republicans controlled the U.S. Senate in thirty-one of thirty-six sessions and the U.S. House in twenty-three sessions. However, between 1932 and 1992, the Republicans controlled the U.S. Senate for five out of thirty-one sessions and the U.S. House for two sessions.

Republicans rarely held seats in the U.S. House from the South during the Solid South period with the party only holding two seats in Tennessee between 1947 and 1952, out of the 105 seats in the south. Republicans won 80 of 2,565 congressional elections in the south during the first half of the 20th century. 50 of these victories were in eastern Tennessee, 17 in western North Carolina and south-western Virginia, and six in a heavily-German district in Texas during the 1920s. Between 1902 and 1950, all U.S. Senators from the south were Democrats after the end of the term of North Carolina U.S. Senator Jeter C. Pritchard.

Eisenhower placed first in 39 congressional districts, four in the Deep South, in the 1952 election, but only six Republicans were elected to the U.S. House from the south. Five of the six Republican victories in the south in the 1952 election were within the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Republicans made a net gain of one seat in the 1954 election, but did not win any additional seats for the rest of the decade. There were only 15 Republican candidates for U.S. House in the entirety of the south in 1958.

During the Reagan administration, there was a decline in Republican congressional support in the south. Republicans held 10 of the 22 U.S. Senate seats and 39 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from the south after the 1980 election, but declined to 7 senate seats while maintaining its representation in the U.S. House of Representatives despite reapportionment increasing the south's seat total by eight. Republicans did not contest one-fourth of the house seats in the south in the 1988 election. Reagan was able to form a governing majority due to a coalition between Republicans and conservative southern Democrats, boll weevils.

Republicans won U.S. Senate seats in Mississippi and Alabama for the first time since Reconstruction in 1978 and 1980, and a statewide office in Georgia in 1980. Georgia and Mississippi were the only southern states to not elect a Republican governor in the 1980s.

In 1991, the Democratic U.S. House delegation from the south was 72 white members and 5 black members, but this changed to 37 white members and 16 black members by 2001. Democrats held a majority of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate seats in the south after the 1992 elections. However, the Republicans gain a 64 to 61 control in the U.S. House and 13 to 9 control in the U.S. Senate after the 1994 elections.

Ten of the twelve Democrats who served as Speaker or Minority Leader between 1891 and 1961, were from the south. Southerners held at least one leadership position during the Democratic control of Congress in the later half of the 20th century. The Republican leaders of the 104th United States Congress (Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and Tom DeLay) were all from the south. Trent Lott, a southerner, replaced Alan Simpson as the party's whip in the U.S. Senate and later became the Majority Leader in 1996.

Democratic
Women accounted for 13% of the southern delegates at the 1968 convention, but rose to 36% at the 1972 convention and continued to rise to parity with male delegates at following conventions. Black delegates from the south rose from none in 1960, to 10% in 1968, and 24% in 1972. Black delegates continued to increase to account for one-third of the southern delegates at the 1988 convention, with them accounting for 46% of the Deep South's delegates.

Republican
After his accession to the presidency Ford selected Nelson Rockefeller, rather than George H. W. Bush, to serve as his vice president. Bryce Harlow stated that Bush would have been better for party unity, but that Rockefeller would receive better coverage from the media and make Ford a stronger candidate in the 1976 election. Conservatives, including Reagan, opposed the selection as Rockefeller "might inherit the presidency" according to Lou Cannon.

Ford was the first incumbent Republican president to face significant primary opposition since Taft in 1912. Reagan's campaign was performing poorly following defeats in New Hampshire, Florida, and Illinois. In North Carolina, Ford was backed by moderate Governor James Holshouser while Reagan was backed by conservative U.S. Senator Jesse Helms and Thomas F. Ellis. North Carolina was Reagan's first victory during the 1976 primary and also won Texas, Alabama, and Georgia. Both candidates lacked a majority of the delegates at the end of the campaign and Reagan attempted to gain support by selecting moderate U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate. However, he instead lost support from conservatives and Ford won the nomination. One-third of Reagan's delegate support at the convention came from the south.

South
In 1876, over 70% of southern voters participated in the election, but declined to less than 60% by 1896, and less than 30% by 1904. Voter participation reached a low of below 20% in the 1924 election. Increase voting rights in the 1950s and 1960s raised participation to 38% in 1952, and around 51% in 1968, the first time 1896 that a majority voted. The percentage of black southerners who were registered to vote rose from around 20% in 1952, to 43% in 1964, and a majority in 1968.

Proposals for holding the presidential primaries of southern states at once started in the 1970s in order to maintain and increase the region's influence in presidential elections. It would allow for a conservative favorite son candidate from the south to receive a lead in delegate totals and produce momentum for the other primaries. Other southern presidential candidates had fared poorly in the initial contests in Iowa and New Hampshire which allowed more liberal candidates to gain the nomination.

Alabama, Florida, and Georgia designated the second Tuesday of March as the date for their presidential primaries and the Southern Legislative Conference lobbied other states to join. 864 Democratic and 564 Republican delegates came from the southern states in the 1988 primary. Frank Fahrenkopf, chair of the Republican National Committee, stated that "Southern Democrats intended Super Tuesday to be a way to moderate their party", but that "the Democrats have handed us a tremendous opportunity to win over the disaffected majority of their party".

Demographics
Four-fifths of white southerners identified as Democrats in 1952, with the Republicans being found in east Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, and western North Carolina.

Nixon won 79% of the southern white vote in the 1972 election, and received 86% of the white vote in the Deep South. CBS reported that Nixon won former Wallace voters three to one. Nixon's highest margins of victory were in Mississippi and Georgia. It was the first time that a Republican presidential candidate won the entirety of the south.

Southern turnout in the Republican primaries rose from 2.1 million in 1980, to 3.8 million in 1988. Turnout in Texas rose from 527,000 to 1,015,000, in Florida from 614,000 to 901,000, and in Georgia from 200,000 to 401,000. Over 40% of southern white voters participated in the Republican primaries except for in Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas. 97% of the Republican electorate in the primaries were white. The amount of registered Republican voters increased in the south during the 1980s with Louisiana rising from 7% in 1980 to 16% in 1988, North Carolina rising from 24% to 30%, and Florida rising from 30% to 39%.

Southern white conservatives were plurality Democratic in 1976, with independent in second and Republican in third at 30%. The Republican figure rose to 40% in 1980, and 52% in 1984. In 1988, 60% identified themselves as Republicans while 16% identified as Democrats. In 1982, 45% of whites in the south identified as Democrats and 23% as Republicans, but this changed to 45% identifying as Republican and 34% as Democratic in 1988. Arkansas and Louisiana were the only southern states with more identified white Democrats than Republicans.

70% of white southerners voted for Bush in the 1988 election, but this declined to 52% in 1992. However, the amount of white southerners identifying themselves as Republican decreased by 2%.

Democratic presidential
The President's Committee on Civil Rights, organized by Truman, published To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights in 1947. This report recommended the passage of civil rights legislation and ending segregation.

Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson stated that Thurmond's campaign was a "psychological break" which "opened the path for two-party development in the region".

Earl Black and Merle Black stated that Kefauver was the first southerner to seek the Democratic presidential nomination through a national campaign rather than a regional one. They also stated that his strategies were later used by Jimmy Carter's successful presidential campaign in the 1976 election.

Truman was the last Democratic presidential nominee to win a majority of the white vote in the south. The 1956 election was the first time since 1872 that the Democratic presidential nominee failed to win a majority of the south's electoral votes. Humphrey had the worst performance for a Democratic presidential nominee in the South since the 1868 election.

Wallace sought the Democratic nomination in the 1972 election, but shifted his statements from explicit segregationism to white backlash. Theodore H. White wrote that Wallace's campaign was "not just a Southern phenomenon", but "a national phenomenon". He won the primaries in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and performed well with second-place results in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and West Virginia. However, his campaign was effectively ended by an assassination attempt despite his following victories in Maryland and Michigan.

McGovern won the nomination at the convention, but on the ballot the southern delegates split between 40% backing Wallace, 23% for McGovern, 11% for Shirley Chisholm and Henry M. Jackson each, 8% for Terry Sanford, and 5% for Wilbur Mills. Wallace received his strongest amount of support from the Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee delegations selected through primaries, but the rest of the south selected its delegates by convention. Wallace only won Alabama and 19% of the overall delegates from these states as these delegations had more black, female, and younger representation which stood opposed to him.

Carter was able to find support in the south, unlike Kefauver, and elsewhere, unlike Russell, Johnson, and Wallace. He performed well in the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. Carter ran for governor of Georgia in the 1970 election and faced Carl Sanders, who had the support of a biracial coalition, in the primary. Carter focused on and won the white vote giving him the nomination. He governed as a New South leader and received support from Martin Luther King Sr. and Andrew Young in the 1976 primary. Carter defeated Wallace in Florida due to support from minority voters and labor unions and later in North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

Wallace ended his campaign after the primaries and endorsed Carter as a fellow southerner. Carter did not have enough delegates for the nomination, but support from Wallace, Richard M. Daley, and Jackson brought him enough to win. Carter's strongest area of delegate support at the convention was 89% of the south followed by 84% from the border states, 79% from the northeast, 77% from the midwest, and 54% from the west.

Carter, the first major party presidential candidate from the deep south since Zachary Taylor, won every southern state except for Virginia in the 1976 presidential election. From the 1980 to 1988 presidential elections Georgia was the only southern state to support a Democratic presidential candidate.

In 1991, Alan Diamonstein, the former chair of the Virginia Democratic Party, stated that "You got to carry the South or you're dead" and Ed Sims, the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, stated that the lesson of previous presidential elections was "not that you write off the South", but that "you get a candidate who can run in the South".

Republican presidential
Southern states sent delegations to Republican conventions that accounted for one-fourth of the overall amount despite the Democratic dominance of the region. These delegates were viewed as rotten boroughs and gave their support to the incumbent or the frontrunner. The issue exploded in 1912, when President William Howard Taft used control his 83% control of Southern delegations to defeat former President Theodore Roosevelt at the Republican National Convention. Delegate allocation by state was altered after this election to be based on how well the party did electorally in those states. Southern delegate sizes fell from 23% of the total delegates in 1912, to 18% in 1916. The mixed-race Black-and-tan faction's control of Republican parties in the south was ended by the Lily-white movement and according to V. O. Key Jr. by 1949, black Republicans only held power in the Mississippi affiliate. At the 1964 convention the Georgia delegation was entirely white for the first time in fifty years.

G. Alexander Heard stated that "the southern oligarchies have greatly bolstered the conservative wing of the Republican party". Eisenhower's victories in southern states increased their delegation sizes to account for 21% of the total delegates at the 1956 convention, the highest since the rule change. By 1964, a candidate that could unify delegations from the west and south would hold four-fifths of the required amount of delegates for the nomination, taking power away from more liberal Republicans in the northeast. 270 of the 279 southern delegates gave their support to Barry Goldwater, 31% of his overall support.

Thurmond left the Democratic Party in September, to join the Republicans. Goldwater gave a televised speech in Columbia, South Carolina, that featured segregationist politicians on-stage with him, including Thurmond, Iris Faircloth Blitch, James F. Byrnes, James H. Gray Sr., Albert Watson, and John Bell Williams, in which he criticized the Civil Rights Act.

Nixon met with southern Republicans and party chairmen, including John Tower and Thurmond, on May 31, 1968, in Atlanta, Georgia, and promised to slow integration efforts and forced busing. Ronald Reagan entered the 1968 primary late and attempted to gain the support of the southern delegations, with Nixon stating that "it was Ronald Reagan who set the hearts of many Southern Republicans aflutter", but the delegations had committed to Nixon and Thurmond helped maintain their support for Nixon. Southern delegates accounted for 46% of the delegates needed to win the nomination at the 1968 convention. Nixon received his highest level of support from the south, which gave him 74% of their vote and accounted for 33% of his overall support.

Nixon wrote in his memoir that the south was the most important region for winning both the nomination and the presidency. However, he had to concede the Deep South to Wallace and instead presented himself as a compromise between Wallace and Humphrey to the rest of the south. Nixon's campaign in the south was managed by Harry S. Dent Sr. and Thurmond. Dent had Nixon used euphemisms in opposition to school desegregation and forced busing.

John Sears, Reagan's campaign manager in 1976, proposed that he moderate his policies to prevent being seen as another Goldwater. Reagan replaced Sears on the day of the William J. Casey, who shifted to more conservative messaging. Reagan won 63% of the conservative vote in the New Hampshire primary while winning one-third of the liberal and moderate vote.

Reagan's victories in the south solidified his control of the Republican nomination. Lee Atwater and Carroll A. Campbell Jr. managed his successful campaign in South Carolina despite John Connally having the support of Thurmond and Governor James B. Edwards. Reagan won the entire south with him taking over 60% in North Carolina, over 70% in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Louisiana, and over 80% in Mississippi.

174 delegates were selected in the Republican primary before Super Tuesday and Bush held 35.1% of these delegates. After Super Tuesday Bush held 73.5% of the 959 delegates selected so far. Bush's victory in all but one state on Super Tuesday nearly secured him enough delegates to win the primary. Bush won a majority of the vote in all southern states except for in three states, and received 85.7% of their delegates due to the primaries being winner-take-all. Pat Robertson's campaign was weakened following a defeat in South Carolina and Super Tuesday.

Bush selected Atwater to manage his presidential campaign in the 1988 election. Atwater obtained hundreds of southern endorsements for Bush and focused on Evangelical voters, who made up a large amount of the southern electorate.