Writing Southern Politics by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

 Chapter 7

Population Shifts Change a Region’s Politics

The Old South Morphs into the New

Susan A. MacManus With the assistance of Brittany L. Penberthy and Thomas A. Watson

Coon dogs and kudzu. Banjos and biscuits. For years, the American South was as distinct from the rest of the nation as Jupiter from Mars. No more. The Rust Belt exodus and the Sun Belt renaissance have brought a host of new faces to the region, and the Wal-Mart-izing of the nation’s suburbs has left stretches of Mobile, Ala., and Charleston, S.C., indistinguishable from the outskirts of Milwaukee and Cheyenne, Wyo.

—Margaret Edds, Tallahassee Democrat, June 16, 2003.

WRITING ABOUT THE SOUTH’S POLITICS requires one to write about the area’s population metamorphosis. Population in-migration and shifts within the region (and within individual states) have dramatically altered the southern political landscape and increased the South’s clout at the national level. With each election cycle comes a new flurry of writings from academics and journalists describing how the region has changed in its politics and population makeup. (See tables 7.1 and 7.2 for state-by-state presidential voting patterns and population growth rates.)

The linkage between population shifts and political change has been assumed by writers more than it is has been empirically demonstrated. The more journalistic writers have tended to focus on the election at hand, making the literature more cross-sectional than longitudinal in design, and on a specific state, making it more a case study than comparative.

Table 7.1: Vote for Democratic Presidential Candidate in Southern States, 1952–2004

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