IS THE SOLID SOUTH BACK?

Mississippi writer Willie Morris once said that “much of the South is about remembrance.” No recollection of the past is deeper, or more relevant today, than that of the Solid South.

One hundred years ago the term was used to describe the political allegiance of the eleven states of the former Confederacy to the Democratic party. Black Americans were largely omitted from the experience of voting, so white voters cast ballots unanimous for just one party.

The Trump victory shows that a new faithfulness has emerged today, reminiscent of the old, but this time for Republicans.

Between the end of Reconstruction in 1877, and the political changes in the 1960s, Democratic allegiance in the South was expected in every election. As one political scientist put it, “This degree of persistence is surprising because identification is a minor part of the typical American’s self-conception.” Primary elections were competitive in the region, but general elections were an afterthought. Venerable Harvard professor V.O. Key said that for democracy to work, contestants had to know that the outcome was fair, otherwise “they will shoot each other.” He then went on to note that in 1949, East Tennessee had “a high incidence of electoral irregularity and a high mortality from gunshots during political campaigns.” Politics was predictable and serious business.

In the 1924 presidential election, Calvin Coolidge won virtually every state except the eleven-state Southern block, plus Oklahoma. Republican domination in Washington meant little change in the day-to-day life of southerners. Every US senator was a Democrat in those days, as were ninety-eight percent of the Congressmen. Virtually no Republican counted in any state legislature. An upstate textile worker once went to hear a GOP gubernatorial candidate speak during the Great Depression: “He was a nice man for being in the wrong party,” he concluded.

Change in Southern allegiance began in the 1960s. When Lyndon Johnson joined John F. Kennedy on the Democratic ticket in the first election of the new decade, Texas voters elected Republican John Tower to fill his senate seat. Tower was the first GOP official to win a Lone Star state election since Reconstruction. In 1964, SC Senator Strom Thurmond changed his allegiance from Democrat to Republican, and won sixty-two percent of the popular vote two years later.

The fast-growing sunbelt economy brought better jobs to the region, and suburbs attracted new residents to work in them. Every election cycle increased competition, and more Republicans won election to offices ranging from city council to Congress.

Historical allegiance to Solid South party loyalty received its biggest challenge in 1980, when an ebullient Californian named Ronald Reagan upset former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter to win the White House. The winner was engaging and remarkably confident. He was also conservative. Liberal critics said Reagan was Hollywood hollow, but he soon captured the country’s imagination. After a landslide national win in 1984, Reagan still faced southern senators who were equally divided in allegiance, and southern congressmen who were two to one with the Democrats.

Even so, it was the beginning of the end of loyalty to the Democrats in the Solid South. Black voters were ever allegiant; but newcomers, older Southerners and others known as ‘Reganauts’ fled the party. The political conservatism of the South was deep and lasting, as fragile as an old photographic and resistant to anything that came out of Washington or California. A new electorate might be living in suburbs, but the houses sat on land with crops that once had a long growing season, family allegiance and faith. As Thomas Wolfe said, life was like: “The thick soft gravy of time itself, sternly yet beautifully soaking down forever on you – and enriching everything it touches.”

On election night in 2024, now Solid South Republicans controlled the upper and lower legislative chambers of every state body, except that of Virginia. Seventy percent of the congressional representatives, and eighty percent of the senators, were in the GOP. Donald Trump carried five southern states with over sixty percent of the vote. When the eleven states were totaled together, fifty-six percent of the vote was Republican. They were over one-third of Trump’s national victory margin, with the only loss being in Virginia by 224,000 votes.

It wasn’t a repeat of 1924, but in many ways, it was. It’s just that this time, the loyalty was in a different direction.