If the Great Migrations never happened

[darklordoftech]

What if most blacks stayed in the South?

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

Most of the Deep South would be Solidly Democratic today, for one.

[brucejoel99]

How would this happen? Much of the Great Migration was just rural flight, even if of a particular minority.

[Vittorio]

You essentially have to prevent American entry into the First World War, or any major war during the first half of the twentieth-century, for this to happen. And even this wouldn't stymie the Great Migration entirely; much of it was predicated on the emergence of the Second Klan in the South. You'd probably still end up with a Lesser Migration regardless.

[brucejoel99]

You essentially have to prevent American entry into the First World War, or any major war during the first half of the twentieth-century, for this to happen. And even this wouldn't stymie the Great Migration entirely; much of it was predicated on the emergence of the Second Klan in the South. You'd probably still end up with a Lesser Migration regardless.

Even considering this, though, there was always gonna be a post-Reconstruction racist backlash (i.e. Jim Crow), meaning that there were always gonna be affected people fleeing for the North too (especially when they're incentivized to do so by the labor shortage & good-paying factory jobs available for them in the North to take if they do so).

[Karpatsky]

I had a thread and some calculations on this here:

Very rough calculations done for fun, by 'resetting' African-American population distribution to 1860 levels. A few simplifying caveats: I didn't account for population changes changing EVs, assumed that all AAs vote Democratic, and that AAs turned out at the same level as the general population. I hope to do a more precise version sometime in the future.

In all these maps, 30% = closer than 5%, 40% = closer than 10%.

2008:

375/163

Closest states:

PA: R+0.47%
NJ: D+1.11%
MO: R+1.63%
MI: D+2.23%
MT: R+2.93%

2012:

353/200

Closest states:

DE: R+0.32%
WI: D+0.87%
CO: D+1.08%
IL: D+1.99%
TX: D+2.30%

2016:

303/235

Closest states:

MS: R+0.13%
NJ: R+0.47%
CO: D+0.63%
NH: R+0.85%
ME: D+2.19%

Here's my PVI calculation, based only on 2012 and 2016. Sorry to pagestretch, but I couldn't figure out how to do spoilers.

 Wyoming: R+26
 Oklahoma: R+24
 Utah: R+21
 West Virginia: R+21
 Idaho: R+19
 North Dakota: R+17
 Kansas: R+16
 Nebraska: R+16
 South Dakota: R+15
 Indiana: R+14
 Alaska: R+12
 Montana: R+11
 Missouri: R+10
 Arkansas: R+9
 Kentucky: R+9
 Ohio: R+9
 Tennessee: R+9
 Arizona: R+7
 Michigan: R+7
 Pennsylvania: R+6
 Alabama: R+5
 Delaware: R+4
 Iowa: R+4
 Louisiana: R+4
 Nevada: R+4
 Wisconsin: R+3
 Minnesota: R+2
 Colorado: R+1
 New Hampshire: R+1
 New Jersey: R+1
 Illinois: EVEN
 Mississippi: EVEN
 Connecticut: D+1
 Georgia: D+2
 New Mexico: D+2
 Texas: D+2
 Maine: R+3
 Maryland: D+3
 North Carolina: D+3
 New York: D+4
 Oregon: D+4
 Washington: D+5
 Rhode Island: D+6
 South Carolina: D+7
 Virginia: D+7
 Massachusetts: D+8
 California: D+9
 Florida: D+13
 Vermont: D+15
 Hawaii: D+16
 District of Columbia: D+43

Interestingly, this would almost perfectly reverse the current EC advantage - Republicans would need to win the PV by at least 2% (probably more if this alternate world has similar racial polarization as OTL) to win the EC.  One certainly imagines all the arguments about how the EC unfairly benefits big city liberals were this the case.

[Karpatsky]

Here's some more. I've stopped counting state EVs because I don't feel like digging up population growth statistics by race at the moment, so these are approximations based on OTL numbers. In no case do I believe they affected the outcome.

2004:

315/223

Closest states:
CT: D+0.02%
LA: D+0.1%
NH: D+0.15%
AR: D+0.48%
NC: R+1.04%

2000:

286/252

My earlier comment on Dem EC advantage was based on the 2012/2016 PVI, and evidently isn't true in general, because Gore gets cheated again in this world, by an even larger margin.

Closest states:
MD: R+0.71%
MS: D+0.78%
GA: D+0.91%
NJ: D+1.38%
NC: R+1.43%


1996:

391/147

Closest states:

MI: R+1.0%
MD: R+1.1%
PA: R+1.6%
AZ: R+1.9%
IL: D+2.6%

Fun fact: under this scenario, a 2% universal swing would give Clinton exactly 450 EVs.

1992:

401/137

Basically nothing changes here re:Perot because he was strongest in the whitest states anyhow.

Closest states:

WI: R+0.1%
NH: D+0.3%
CO: D+1.2%
PA: D+1.3%
CT: R+1.3%

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Most of the Deep South would be Solidly Democratic today, for one.

How can you be sure, if states like Mississippi and South Carolina remain majority-black, there is much more motivation for the GOP to take the lead on civil rights.