How the South Was Lost: Moderate Senators and Minority Support in the South

• In Event: Legislators and Their Constituents

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine how moderate Democrats lost the South in the 2010s after making significant gains in the Senate in the 1990s and early 2000s. Indeed, political science scholarship suggests that these centrist Democrats should have been the pivotal players in the legislative game and by extension, should be able to control legislative outcomes to their preferred policy outcome (Krehbiel 1996, 1998; Brady and Volden 1996). Furthermore, demographic changes during this period should have similarly yielded friendlier constituencies for Democrats. I find that voter suppression efforts like voter identification laws, limitations and reductions in early and absentee voting, and the reduction of polling places adversely impacted minority turnout in the South. Furthermore, moderate Southern Democrats fearing racial backlash amongst white voters, failed to build racially diverse electoral coalitions leaving minority voters underrepresented in the South.

Author

• Neil Chaturvedi, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona