What would it take for the South to vote Dem again - NOW

[NeverAgain]

What would it take for the "old" south (SC, TN, MS, AL, AR, GA, and LA) to vote blue again. I mean a "populist" would probably either not get much headway trying to appeal to moderate Dems, or be called out for being a Republican. In both situations they would not win the primaries. I emphasize now, because of the consistent ideal that minorities will flip some of the south, which even if true, would not be for some couple of decades. Ideas?

[ElectionsGuy]

Become the party of John Bel Edwards. But that still wouldn't be enough, since the circumstances behind the Louisiana race allowed him to be ahead. Be socially conservative (including being against gun control, for 'religious liberty', etc) but also flip bigger government into efficient government that will put power in the hands of the taxpayers (or whatever phrase you want to use). Scrap the equality stuff, your typical southern voter has never voted for something because of equality. They need to outgoing spokespersons for the typical white religious southern voter, and as far as I'm concerned, that will never happen.

[Kingpoleon]

2017-2025: Sen. Marco Rubio(R-FL)/Sen. Joni Ernst(R-IAL)
Def.: 2016: Hillary Clinton(D-NY)/Sen. Cory Booker(D-NJ), 2020: Gov. Gavin Newsom(D-CA)/Sen. Michelle Nunn(D-GA)

2025-: Sen. Michelle Nunn(D-GA)/Gov. Anthony Foxx(D-NC)
Def.: 2024: Vice Pres. Joni Ernst(R-IA)/Gov. Patricia Anderson(R-MN)

[DS0816]

What would it take for the "old" south (SC, TN, MS, AL, AR, GA, and LA) to vote blue again. I mean a "populist" would probably either not get much headway trying to appeal to moderate Dems, or be called out for being a Republican. In both situations they would not win the primaries. I emphasize now, because of the consistent ideal that minorities will flip some of the south, which even if true, would not be for some couple of decades. Ideas?

Either the two parties realign to where they used to have their base states—or a 40-state electoral landslide would need to materialize.

[Bigby]

Move all Southern whites to another region, keep all of the blacks in the South there, and move other blacks into the region to keep population numbers up. That's just about the only way.

[Pragmatic Conservative]

Arkansas had a Democratic Governor from (2006-2014)
most major polls are showing a wide lead for Democrat John Bel Edwards in Louisiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_gubernatorial_election,_2015
Democrat Mary Landrieu held the  Louisiana Senate seat from 1996-2014

Focusing on middle class might help as well focusing on poverty reduction(seeing how some of the southern states are among the poorest),  This alone probably would not work. A perfect storm similar to what is happening in Louisiana    with a strong Democratic Candidate an open seat and controversy to surround the Republican Candidate.  

Besides this hope for a divided right  

[Asian Nazi]

What would it take for the "old" south (SC, TN, MS, AL, AR, GA, and LA) to vote blue again.

No Democrat who could win any of these states in a normal election right now would survive the Democratic primary.  In a total landslide, you could see GA and maybe SC going for a Generic Democrat, but I feel like the other states have Republican floors over 50%.

[/]

John Breaux/Mike Beebe
Tim Pawlenty/Charlie Dent

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Even Bob Conley and Mark Clayton couldn't flip very many Republicans.

[RINO Tom]

Nothing.  Obama was too toxic for the Democratic brand in the South, the ACTUAL "old Southern Democrats" are dying off more and more each year (the idea that all of them are just becoming straight-ticket Republican voters, while sound on the service, is just not true) and more and more young Southern Whites are growing up with parents who think fondly of Ronald Reagan rather than of FDR.  Frankly, the only people who would think of "the traditionally Democratic South" are White Southerners well over 60.  Another thing often forgotten is that Republicans started winning Southern seats in newly growing suburbs, often (as Miles once so accurately put it) phrasing the old Solid South as a thing of the past and something for "backwoods hicks."  Republicans didn't come in and usurp the Democratic machine, they beat it over decades.  Anyway, over the next 10-15 years, this would be my strategy:

- Present environmentalism as a "common man" thing, rather than a hobby for granola types with nothing else to do.  Teddy Roosevelt is a great example of this.  Many of the old Southern Democrats were actually environmentalists, but they were much more of the "save our beautiful Southland from these polluting corporations" and much less of the "we need to stop using coal because global warming!" type.  Right now, Republicans can say "listen, we're just ordinary folks, not some big fancy environmental interest group."  Democrats need to rephrase the debate as "maybe these big corporations don't care if they pollute our land, but us middle class folks are the ones who have to live on it."  If you just dumbed down the anti-coal rhetoric and focused on other issues, environmentalism would actually play quite well in the South, especially Appalachia.

- Kitchen.  Table.  Issues.  Many White Southerners think of FDR's Democratic Party as lending their struggling ancestors a helping hand in the hour they most needed it; that was what defined the Democratic Party.  I remember a quote from an old Southerner I read one time that said "If you punch a time clock, you vote Democrat.  If you own the time clock, you vote Republican."  Democrats need to convince poor and middle-class Southern Whites that - as bad as this might sound - they care about their needs just as much as inner city minorities.  The two groups live in very different areas, lead very different lifestyles but both need a lot of help.

- Pick a damn side on foreign policy.  Either be hawkish and own it (as most historical Democratic Presidents have done) or be the "this fat cat Republican wants to send your boy to the Middle East to die while he can afford to send his off to college" alternative.  "Anti-war" needs to stop being presented as far left college students blocking a highway and start being presented as "keep your boys home."

- Actively run unapologetically pro-life candidates.  The GOP does it in the Northeast, Democrats need to do it in the South.  And that doesn't mean Mark Pryor, where AR Republicans can cite how his pro-life voting record is a little dicey.

- Stop pushing gun control or at least champion it being left to the states.  There's nothing inherently "conservative" about states' rights; there just really isn't.  Democrats should not be afraid to ever utter those words, they should just use the doctrine when it's appropriate.  Denying people civil rights?  Not appropriate.  Interpreting the second amendment based on the culture and tradition of each state?  Probably a lot more appropriate.

To many liberal Democrats, this will sound like "becoming the Republicans," but I find that comically hypocritical when you're often the same people who mock Tea Partiers for calling people like Rauner, Sandoval, Baker, Murkowski and Collins "RINOs" just because they disagree with the party on a few social issues...

[Suburbia]

Speak about economics in a way that does not alienate working class white voters. Don't talk about expanding welfare benefits, talk about Good PAYING JOBS and a decent education. Period. Try to appeal to GA, NC, AR, TN. It can be done. Democrats should try to make the South a piece of their coalition. They will have to register more African Americans, Latinos, etc; to make it happen.

[VPH]

Nothing.  Obama was too toxic for the Democratic brand in the South, the ACTUAL "old Southern Democrats" are dying off more and more each year (the idea that all of them are just becoming straight-ticket Republican voters, while sound on the service, is just not true) and more and more young Southern Whites are growing up with parents who think fondly of Ronald Reagan rather than of FDR.  Frankly, the only people who would think of "the traditionally Democratic South" are White Southerners well over 60.  Another thing often forgotten is that Republicans started winning Southern seats in newly growing suburbs, often (as Miles once so accurately put it) phrasing the old Solid South as a thing of the past and something for "backwoods hicks."  Republicans didn't come in and usurp the Democratic machine, they beat it over decades.  Anyway, over the next 10-15 years, this would be my strategy:

- Present environmentalism as a "common man" thing, rather than a hobby for granola types with nothing else to do.  Teddy Roosevelt is a great example of this.  Many of the old Southern Democrats were actually environmentalists, but they were much more of the "save our beautiful Southland from these polluting corporations" and much less of the "we need to stop using coal because global warming!" type.  Right now, Republicans can say "listen, we're just ordinary folks, not some big fancy environmental interest group."  Democrats need to rephrase the debate as "maybe these big corporations don't care if they pollute our land, but us middle class folks are the ones who have to live on it."  If you just dumbed down the anti-coal rhetoric and focused on other issues, environmentalism would actually play quite well in the South, especially Appalachia.

- Kitchen.  Table.  Issues.  Many White Southerners think of FDR's Democratic Party as lending their struggling ancestors a helping hand in the hour they most needed it; that was what defined the Democratic Party.  I remember a quote from an old Southerner I read one time that said "If you punch a time clock, you vote Democrat.  If you own the time clock, you vote Republican."  Democrats need to convince poor and middle-class Southern Whites that - as bad as this might sound - they care about their needs just as much as inner city minorities.  The two groups live in very different areas, lead very different lifestyles but both need a lot of help.

- Pick a damn side on foreign policy.  Either be hawkish and own it (as most historical Democratic Presidents have done) or be the "this fat cat Republican wants to send your boy to the Middle East to die while he can afford to send his off to college" alternative.  "Anti-war" needs to stop being presented as far left college students blocking a highway and start being presented as "keep your boys home."

- Actively run unapologetically pro-life candidates.  The GOP does it in the Northeast, Democrats need to do it in the South.  And that doesn't mean Mark Pryor, where AR Republicans can cite how his pro-life voting record is a little dicey.

- Stop pushing gun control or at least champion it being left to the states.  There's nothing inherently "conservative" about states' rights; there just really isn't.  Democrats should not be afraid to ever utter those words, they should just use the doctrine when it's appropriate.  Denying people civil rights?  Not appropriate.  Interpreting the second amendment based on the culture and tradition of each state?  Probably a lot more appropriate.

To many liberal Democrats, this will sound like "becoming the Republicans," but I find that comically hypocritical when you're often the same people who mock Tea Partiers for calling people like Rauner, Sandoval, Baker, Murkowski and Collins "RINOs" just because they disagree with the party on a few social issues...

I'd consider myself pretty progressive, but I agree on most of these points.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

Presidentially, it's just such a huge leap.  Would basically require the nominee getting through the primary and 3rd party filing deadlines as a moderate liberal, then, very publicly and in no uncertain terms, telling all social justice/environmental/immigration activists to go f*** themselves because the real issue is middle class jobs and unionization rights.  Even if he/she went on to win the South, there would be the little problem of literally tearing the party in half for a generation. 

Agreed completely. The Democrats don't win in the South because national party leaders and liberal activists actively treat southern Whites and their values like the enemy. If a party's leaders treated you like that, you wouldn't vote for them, either.

Yet southern Whites are still more economically populist than their northern counterparts. Southern states tend, in my experience, to regulate business more harshly than northern ones. Southern voters voted in the people that made it that way. But today's national Democrats and the activist groups that support them are too busy mocking and ridiculing "racist" southern Whites and treating them like Satan to realize that. Meanwhile, the longer these voters spend in the GOP, the more they're starting to come around to Republican economic views, further distancing them from the party of their ancestors.

Democrats didn't lose the South; they actively pushed it away. For a Democratic presidential candidate to win there will require a loud, public, and consistent rejection of SJW politics and their supporters. So far, only Joe Manchin seems to be able to figure this out. He's your example if you want to be relevant in the South again. Economic populism, yes. Social justice, no.

[DS0816]

You take today's two party's, and you date it back to the Republicans' first participating election, in 1856, and the election cycles number 40.

Around 55 percent of those elections were won by the party whose base states were not the Old Confederacy states.

1. 1860
2. 1864
3. 1868
4. 1872
5. 1876
6. 1880
7. 1888
8. 1896
9. 1900
10. 1904
11. 1908
12. 1920
13. 1924
14. 1928
15. 1952
16. 1956
17. *1964 (deviation from the normal map in which Democratic president Lyndon Johnson saw losing Republican Barry Goldwater win states that had normally carried Democratic, like Alabama and Mississippi, while Johnson countered with states that had normally carried Republican, most especially Vermont)
18. 1968 (transitional period in which Republicans and Democrats won a little on both parties' turf; half credit)
19. 1980 (transitional period, as Ronald Reagan carried some base states above and below his national margin…while not having won every Old Confederacy state, as some were above and some were below his national margin; half credit)
20. 1992
21. 1996
22. 2008
23. 2012

Score: 21/40 = 52.50 percent; counting transitionals (half-credit): 22/40 = 55.00 percent


The presidential elections, from 1856 to 2012, in which a party's base states were/are in the Old Confederacy:

1. 1856
2. 1884
3. 1892
4. 1912
5. 1916
6. 1932
7. 1936
8. 1940
9. 1944
10. 1948
11. 1960 (transitional period in which Republican and Democrats won each opposite turf)
12. *1972 (deviation form previous norm as re-elected Republican Richard Nixon carried all Old Confederacy states above his national margin)
13. 1976 (transitional period, mixed with traditional map, as Democrat Jimmy Carter won primarily through the Old Confederacy states…but he barely flipped Mississippi, which was under his national margin, and failed to win over Virginia while he did flip the 1960 Republican-/Nixon- carried northern state Wisconsin)
14. 1984 (transitional period, as Ronald Reagan was re-elected with 49 states, leaving Walter Mondale with his home state Minnesota plus District of Columbia, yet he did not win all Old Confederacy states above his national margin; Tennessee was under; but I will give this full credit especially given that I'm willing to do that with 1992 and 1996 as Bill Clinton didn't carry Oregon above his national margins in either election)
15. 1988
16. 2000
17. 2004

Score: 14/40 = 35.00 percent; counting transitionals (half-credit): 15.50/40 = 38.75 percent


When you look at the list from my recent thread, @ https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=222186.0 , it helps support why the better electoral map of party base states is the one not from the Old Confederacy states.

[Adam Griffin]

ITT: a bunch of delusional Republicans & Yankees

The first thing that needs to happen, of course, is to make the states' voting blocs look like the actual adult populations. If you manage to do that, then GA is a Democratic state once again; MS & SC become battleground states (they all become D-leaning or reliable D states if you begin to make the electorate resemble the state based on race and age).

The next thing you do is pretty much forget about the rest. AR & LA will sway back and forth at the state level depending on the variables (a perfect Southern Dem + a toxic Republican candidate & climate), but you write-off TN & AL barring some huge demographic shift. You write all four of these off in presidential elections.

At this point, "the South" will consist of a Democratic FL, VA, GA, NC and battlegrounds of SC & MS. You're winning in Southern states that comprise 73 out of 122 EVs outright, with the possibility of winning in Southern states that comprise 88 out of 122 EVs. If you throw in elasticity for state elections in AR & LA, then you're talking about being able to score some type of statewide victory in Southern states that comprise 102 out of 122 EVs. That'll just have to be good enough.

[Adam Griffin]

And I mean, I know everybody has their own definitions (mine tend to be a bit more restrictive whenever dealing with geography), but it's really not that bad right now as an entire region:

[Ebsy]

Missouri is not Southern.

[tschandler]

Presidentially, it's just such a huge leap.  Would basically require the nominee getting through the primary and 3rd party filing deadlines as a moderate liberal, then, very publicly and in no uncertain terms, telling all social justice/environmental/immigration activists to go f*** themselves because the real issue is middle class jobs and unionization rights.  Even if he/she went on to win the South, there would be the little problem of literally tearing the party in half for a generation. 

Agreed completely. The Democrats don't win in the South because national party leaders and liberal activists actively treat southern Whites and their values like the enemy. If a party's leaders treated you like that, you wouldn't vote for them, either.

Yet southern Whites are still more economically populist than their northern counterparts. Southern states tend, in my experience, to regulate business more harshly than northern ones. Southern voters voted in the people that made it that way. But today's national Democrats and the activist groups that support them are too busy mocking and ridiculing "racist" southern Whites and treating them like Satan to realize that. Meanwhile, the longer these voters spend in the GOP, the more they're starting to come around to Republican economic views, further distancing them from the party of their ancestors.

Democrats didn't lose the South; they actively pushed it away. For a Democratic presidential candidate to win there will require a loud, public, and consistent rejection of SJW politics and their supporters. So far, only Joe Manchin seems to be able to figure this out. He's your example if you want to be relevant in the South again. Economic populism, yes. Social justice, no.

As an Alabamian I would point out that Republicans only got complete control of the state (on a statewide level) in 2010.  A lot of "Democrats" ran by running like Republicans and voting like Democrats.  It finally took both Obama and declining boomers to beat that back.   Generation X (my parents generation) is overwhelmingly Republican and will only become more so as they age.   Millennials will probably settle in a "normal" distribution compared to other red states.  But white males under 60 will never be won by a Democrat who hates their AR-15, blue and white collar alike.

And also to add what has been said.  The Democrats as they are constructed now aren't going to win states like Alabama.  Alabamians don't see keeping taxes low on anyone as a bad thing.  They have always been for lower taxes even the Democrats.  And they see what lower tax rates have done to encourage industry and people to move here over time.  The racial factors are really a wash though. 

[Rockefeller GOP]

Missouri is not Southern.

Similar to IL, of course the state isn't as a whole.  But southern MO is absolutely Southern.

[Mr. Illini]

Missouri is not Southern.

As a midwesterner, I consider it so.

I understand southerners may see it differently.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Missouri is not Southern.

As a midwesterner, I consider it so.

I understand southerners may see it differently.

Missouri is (barely) Southern- The tiebreaker is that Mizzou plays in the SEC.

States that are completely Southern are in green, and states that are kind of/partially Southern are in gray (the rest are in their 2012 colors):

Before anyone questions MD, IL, and IN, I am referring to the panhandle of MD and the Southern tips of IL and IN.

[Sol]

Of course Maryland is a southern state. Don't be stupid.

[Rockefeller GOP]

Whatever MD is, DE is.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

I only consider the states that seceded to be Southern.  Missouri, Kentucky, and Oklahoma have some Southern characteristics, but I would not classify them as Southern.  As a Northern Kentuckian I can assure you that there is a line that divides Kentucky between the Southern and Midwestern parts.  The majority of Kentuckians do not live in the Southern part.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I only consider the states that seceded to be Southern.  Missouri, Kentucky, and Oklahoma have some Southern characteristics, but I would not classify them as Southern.  As a Northern Kentuckian I can assure you that there is a line that divides Kentucky between the Southern and Midwestern parts.  The majority of Kentuckians do not live in the Southern part.

I know people from both Lexington and Louisville who are very Southern.