From the NYT: The Demise of the Southern Democrat Is Now Nearly Complete

With the defeat of Mary Landrieu there are no Democrat holds statewide office in any southern state outside of Florida and Virginia. The trend that started slowly when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 seems to now be complete. The Atlantic ran a recent article calling Landrieu The Last Southern Democrat.

- Click here for the article.

Here's the proof:



The article hits on themes we cover in both 2305 and 2306. What we seem to be seeing is white flight from the party.

Here's a taste:

The timing of the demise of the Southern Democrat is not coincidental. It reflects a complete cycle of generational replacement in the post-Jim Crow era. Old loyalties to the Democratic Party have died along with the generation of white Southerners who came of age during the era of the Solid South, before Brown v. Board of Education, before the Civil Rights Act.

Yet it also reflects the very specific conditions of 2014. Today’s national Democratic Party is as unpopular in the South today as it has ever been, in no small part because the party has embraced a more secular agenda that is not popular in the region.

“It’s a completely different party than it was 20 or 30 years ago,” said Merle Black, a professor of political science at Emory University. “When the Democratic Party and its candidates become more liberal on culture and religion, that’s not a party that’s advocating what these whites value or think.”

The party is also led by an unpopular president who has never appealed to the region’s white voters. President Obama won about 17 percent of white voters across the Deep South and Texas in 2012, based on an analysis of pre-election polls conducted by the Pew Research Center, census data and election results.