I actually have a spreadsheet put together from some of these sites, so I know you can select numbers to "prove" just about anything.
But the base-line has to be President Washington in 1792, and that was 2.3% of GDP.
From there excluding war payment years spending went down as low as 1.4% in 1796 and as high as 3.9% in 1816.
Yes, different time periods had somewhat different averages, but overall the numbers never changed much, excluding war payment years, before 1917.
For example: Wilson in 1916 spent 2.1% of GDP, virtually the same as President Washington in 1792.
Then in 1917 it rose to 3.9% -- was that strictly the First World War, or was it also some effect from the new amendments and Federal Reserve?
Please consider, if it was strictly war spending, then Wilson loses all practical claim to being a "big government Progressive", and that would fly in the face of some of what we think we know about Wilson.
But even if we dethrone Wilson from the chair of "Progressive", the numbers still support, with no ambiguity, the claims of "Big Government" New Deal Franklin Roosevelt, and the election results from 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944 show that FDR had no stronger support anywhere than in the Solid South.
So my point remains valid -- that the Solid South loved, loved Democrat Big Government just so long as they believed they would be prime beneficiaries from redistributionist largess.
Finally, by the election of 1964 Southerners realized that Democrats did not have their best interests at heart, and switched, for the first time, supporting Republican Barry Goldwater.
I remember it well...
Hoover won about half the South, as did Eisenhower. Admittedly, that isn’t so surprising, since they also won the rest of the country.
You can go on believing that southern Democrats were all along really big government liberals who eventually saw the light and became conservatives, if you like.
Rational people can recognize that they were intensely conservative in all areas, except of course in race where I believe their views were directly contradictory to real American conservatism.
As I’ve noted before, the notion that GOP = conservative and Democrat = liberal wasn’t always true. Both parties had conservative and liberal wings, the relative strength of which waxed and waned. The conservative wing of the Democrats was centered in the South. but it was strong in the North too for a long time. Liberals finally gained the upper hand in 72.
Race and the aftermath of war explain the Solid South a whole lot better than a desire for big government. This is of course why the Deep South first deserted the Democratic Party in 48 and 68. Race, not size of government.
Hoover and Eisenhower both did better in the South than Goldwater.