Voting In The South

Much of the literature on voting in the South gives credit to changes by the Johnson administration, such as the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and the registration of thousands of black voters resulting in a shift in voting patterns in the South. But I trace the beginning of Republican dominance of the South to Eisenhower. Why? First, voting is habitual. While people may “vote for the man,” the men they vote for are often of the same party. Party is a strong heuristic that carries with it information about policy preferences and perceptions of the effectiveness of a candidate when he/she gets in office. It takes an exceptional candidate to move people from their party attachment to vote for another party. Eisenhower was a Republican politician who received a lot

But changing party preference was about removing policy risks. Democratic identifiers in the South who voted for Eisenhower were more affluent and better educated than those who did not. They were also more likely to have a stay-at-home wife who fulfilled the traditional “housewife” role. The Eisenhower campaign created a new Republican coalition in the South that included primarily upper and middle class whites. Eisenhower proved to some sceptics in the electorate that Republican politicians were not linked with a bad economy. This was a change in perception of the electorate. The Eisenhower presidency was in existence because of a new southern middle class and this new middle class was caused by changes in the economy. The relatively affluent voters would stay Republican voters and became the backbone of the new southern Republican electorate (Shafer and Johnston 2006). If this is correct, then some of the recent studies on changes in the southern electorate started after political changes had already begun making their findings less accurate than we might