Florida is not the south, other than in a strict geographical interpretation. (And Obama just won Florida.)
I’d like to offer some complications to what has been said.
While it is true that the Civil Rights Movement is highly important, there are several other things to remember:
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There were some (albeit not many) Republican or Republican-leaning areas in the South, even in the period between the 1890s (when the Southern Republican parties have their final collapse, connected to the rise of Jim Crow) and the 1950’s. East Tennessee is the best known example, but there were others, including the German-heritage voters of rural Texas, the Shenandoah Valley and Fighting Ninth of Virginia, the westernmost part of North Carolina, and even (prior to 1928, at least) Acadia in Louisiana.
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Presidentially, the Republicans had managed to carry Tennessee in 1920, and (thanks largely to anti-Catholic sentiment) won five states in 1928.
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A breakthrough becomes visible in Southern states, starting in 1952. In the states in questions, reasons were varied. In some cases, changes in the electorate mattered (suburbanization in northern Virginia, the migrations into Florida), in some cases longstanding feuds mattered (for example, large factions of the Texas Democratic party had been fighting with the presidential ticket since 1940), and, in some cases, it is areas that had had Republican histories swinging much more to the party. Civil rights, moreover, had been causing Democrats Southern problems as early as the 1930s, with the fights over lynching legislation.
These items, combined, demonstrate that, while the Civil Rights Movement was of high importance to the shift (especially in the Deep South, which had even stuck to Smith in 1928 and Stevenson in 1956), it is not the sole item to look at.
The 100-year-old comment implies that the southern racists took a long time to realize that they needed to switch allegiance. However, it was only the 1940s when the southern Democrats were fillibustering in Congress to prevent passage of anti-lynching laws. The turnaround of the Democratic party into supporters of racial equality took place over less than a 20 year period in the south.
And what astonishes me is that the Democratic party enjoyed the support of over 70% of blacks even back in the 1940s.
You ever been to Tallahassee?
Okay, Florida is not the south other than a thin sliver that is really Georgia/Alabama.
The Depression and the New Deal accomplished that - but prior to this black support for Republicans was akin to their support for Democrats today.
This didn’t matter in the South, of course, where they could not vote.
The “Solid South” had already begun to break up over the civil rights issue by 1948, when the Truman and Humphrey advocated for a civil rights plank in the Democratic platform and the so-called “Dixiecrats” stormed out of the convention. Strom Thurmond ran as a States Rights Party candidate and won Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina.
More than a sliver, my friend. You can hear Southern accents all the way down to Orlando and Tampa (though they do become more scattered the farther South you go). Jacksonville is very much a Southern town.
Actually, Florida is like a microcosm of the Eastern US, with reversed polarity. Which is probably why it’s a swing state.
Jacksonville is indeed a redneck, er, I mean Sothern, town (how do you do strikethrough font formatting?), but by the time you get to Orlando I would say the southernness has been lost. Sure, you can hear southern accents, but they are in the minority. You can hear English accents too, but it is not part of the United Kingdom.
Will Texas ever go Dem again? The last time was for LBJ, correct? (Not even for Humphrey, I would imagine)
Thanks to the association of Reconstruction with the Radical Republicans and lingering memories and distrust, there was a strong antipathy to the Republican Party in the Old South. Nonetheless, the area was largely conservative, with a progressive minority that nearly always gets disregarded but which elected a large number of candidates from Hugo Black to Sam Rayburn and LBJ to Sam Erwin.
Net result was a conservative Southern wing to the Democratic Party, lasting about a century.
The initial breaking point was when Hubert Humphrey pushed through, and Truman endorsed, a strong civil rights plank in the 1948 party platform. The “Dixiecrats”, the majority of that Southern conservative group, walked out and ran Strom Thurmond against Truman.
The conservatives were more or less loyal Democrats but restive from then on until 1964, when LBJ’s support for civil rights and Goldwater’s conservatism pushed many of them to – horrors – vote Republican. And they discovered they liked the taste.
In 1968, Nixon’s “Southern strategy” successfully weaned the South from the Democrats – albeit with Wallace’s third party that year. 1972 was a landslide for Nixon, and the 1976 election of Carter, which split the South, proved to be a fillip in a move to a solid Republican South – which lasted only 20 years or so.
Carter didn’t split the South, though. He took it whole.
Clinton took several Southern states in 1992 and again in 1996.
Let me assure you that Haines City, Lakeland, Winter Haven, and Lake Wales are further south than Orlando and are culturally southern.
To be fair, in the South the Democratic primaries were very clearly the competitive race, and that’s where the real fight was. You spent all your time and money trying to get nominated, because after that you were a shoo-in. Back then, the Democrats were as socially conservative as the Republicans, so it wasn’t that radical. Besides, their Congressmen represented their preferred views quite well. Only the Presidential elections were weird.
Lyndon Johnson famously remarked to an aide after signing the Civil Rights Act “We have lost the South for a generation”. Look at old election maps- you’ll see a Democratic bastion in the Bible belt even in landslide Republican years like 1924, 1952, 1956, and 1920.
Those two were the exception because of being southerners themselves. Until Obama, the only time electors from the old Confederacy were won by a northern Democrat since 1964 was Humphrey carrying Texas in 1968. Since then- McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry all pulled a big fat zero.
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Obama took North Carolina.
Thank you.
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The NY Times election map actually showed Texas as pale blue when early returns came in–from the cities & the (Rio Grande) Valley. Then rural & suburban votes were counted; Texas was the most populous state to go Republican. The Houston Chronicle shows Democrats hopeful for 2010.
Our Republican “Governor Good Hair” (per the late great Molly Ivins) may face Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 Governor’s race. I love it when Republicans fight! Both of them & Republican Senator Cornyn are being mentioned as possible presidential nominees in 2012. Since ‘the state is a “shining star” for Republicans nationally.’
Did some research on Texas’s presidential voting record. Humphrey won the state, as did Carter–in his first election. All Republican since then…
I needed no research to agree with those who “blame” the loss of the Solid Democratic South on LBJ & his support of civil rights.
There were many reasons. It was in Stephan Ambrose’s excellent bio of Nixon that the Dems had taken the South for granted for so long that there was a lot of discontent anyway. Thus the civil rights movement was the catalyst.