Mr.Phips
Junior Chimp
Posts: 8,546
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« on: June 17, 2013, 04:44:35 PM » |
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The 1962 midterm elections were pretty much the textbook definition of a neutral midterm election that tilted slightly to the President's party. JFK's Democrats gained a few Senate seats, lost a few House seats, stayed even in governships and lost a small amount of state legislative seats.
However, in the results, you can see the beginning of a shift away from Democrats in the South.
The best example of this is the Alabama Senate election, where a Republican came within an eyelash of knocking of the legendary Democratic Senator Lister Hill in a state that had never sent a Republican to the Senate.
You can also see Democrats underpeform in House races, nearly losing seats in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Texas, and actually losing them in Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
What probably caused this shift was the talk from JFK and prominent Congressional Democrats about passing civil rights legislation for the first time ever.
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