Over time, there has been a change to the meaning of agricultural labor, not only in the South but in the nation. A century ago, agriculture was primarily subsistence farming. Today farming is either worked on a commercial scale or worked on a small scale to supplement one’s income (referred to as hobby farming). Some parts of the nation are currently seeing a decrease in specialization in a few crops and reverting to a mixed agricultural model. The South is also seeing an increase in agricultural technological advances like corporate aquaponic and hydroponic operations. While the last half century of agriculture in the South has been focused on reducing production costs by reducing the needed labor, the future seems to be focused on growing …show more content…
Below is the first model. It serves as the basic model against which the other models will be compared. This model measures in some way the role of class, race, turnout and the role of agriculture in society on Republican Party strength. Republican Party strength (major party index) is an appropriate measure of the ability of parties to get people to vote for its’ candidates. The primary variable of interest in all of the models is the interaction between percentage of workers in agriculture and per capita income. If the results are as expected, then as both measures increase so should the party strength. Agricultural employment will be used in the model to measure agriculture’s importance to the society. Because of the structure of the variable, increases in this measure equate to decreases in agriculture related employment. It is expected that if it has an impact of its own, then increases in agricultural employment measure will result in increases in party strength because it will represent a more policy driven economy. The per capita income variable measures the relative wealth of the people of each state. As per capita income rises, one should expect the party strength to go up. This increase in income as well as the awareness of higher wealth pushed more people towards the policies of the Republican Party. The first model also includes the measure of percentage turnout for the congressional ballot. I expect that if turnout is related to party strength, it would in this case do so in a positive direction because the new voters have less attachment to the Democratic Party than people that have previously voted for Democratic candidates. Turnout many have a diminished effect of time as more of the electorate turns out to vote and we move away from an era of dominance by the Democratic Party. The first model also includes the percentage of black people registered to vote in each state. It is