Southern white loyalty to GOP nearing that of Blacks to Democrats

new york times ^ | 4/23/14 | Nate Cohn

[armydawg505]

President Obama’s landslide victory in 2008 was supposed to herald the beginning of a new Democratic era. And yet, six years later, there is not even a clear Democratic majority in the country, let alone one poised for 30 years of dominance.

It’s not because Mr. Obama’s so-called new coalition of young and nonwhite voters failed to live up to its potential. They again turned out in record numbers in 2012. The Democratic majority has failed to materialize because the Republicans made large, countervailing and unappreciated gains of their own among white Southerners.

From the high plains of West Texas to the Atlantic Coast of Georgia, white voters opposed Mr. Obama’s re-election in overwhelming numbers. In many counties 90 percent of white voters chose Mitt Romney, nearly the reversal of the margin by which black voters supported Mr. Obama.

While white Southerners have been voting Republican for decades, the hugeness of the gap was new. Mr. Obama often lost more than 40 percent of Al Gore’s support among white voters south of the historically significant line of the Missouri Compromise. Two centuries later, Southern politics are deeply polarized along racial lines. It is no exaggeration to suggest that in these states the Democrats have become the party of African Americans and that the Republicans are the party of whites.

[nhwingut]

I love this line.

But the white shift is nearly as important to contemporary electoral politics as the Obama coalition. It represents an end, at least temporarily, to the South’s assimilation into the American political and cultural mainstream.

So because they vote Republican now, the South is no longer part of the American mainstream... Only when they vote Democrat.

[armydawg505]

If we are no longer mainstream, let my people go! We tried that once before and they refused to even consider it! It get very “unpleasant.”

[a fool in paradise]

I didn’t choose Mitt Romney, but I sure as heck was going to vote against Biden and the other one.

[Gay State Conservative]

Should read: “Blacks Voting Rat is Good,Whites Voting GOP Is Racist”

[OldRanchHand]

Although the Deep South is solidly Republican in national elections, don’t most local officials (city and county positions) still run as Democrats, even though they identify privately as Republicans? Seems I read an article somewhere to that effect.

[OldPossum]

Your post one was well-stated.

[jch10]

Good post. As a 7th generation NW Floridian, I concur with your comments. I would like to add that I’ve never voted for a Democrat and never will. It is not because I love the GOP so much....oh no! It is because I am a Conservative and want less of everything governmental.

The NYT is a race baiting rag and needs to be shunned as I shun the establishment Republican Party.

[jch10]

Yes, that is somewhat true. Many local politicians stay in the Democrat Party because the rural counties hang on to the Dem registration.....but don’t consider themselves to be liberal or progressive.

I make it a point to admonish any I come across and encourage them to change parties. It took years to get my own brother and his wife to change registrations. Personally, I couldn’t be a Dem just because of Pelosi, Reid, Shumer, Clinton, etc. Most people, I find, don’t feel like that is compromising their values. So much for their values.

[ansel12]

Obama is among the top white vote getter for all democrat presidential candidates of modern America.

[armydawg505]

I started voting in the 1972 presidential election and have never voted for a democrat for President or Governor of GA. Can’t imagine that I ever will.

[longtermmemmory]

I would submit the loyalty is shallow not deep.

One misstep and they are primaried.