Debunking political myths of southern voting
How has the South influenced the presidential elections?
This one uses the http://dsl.richmond.edu/voting/ website.
Myth 1: Third parties never played a significant role in presidential elections (sets the stage)
We have always learned that after the upheaval of our country’s founding, we settled into a two party political
system. There have always been the Democrats and there were first the Whigs, which were then replaced by
Republicans. We have always believed third parties never garnered any widespread support, much less effected
a presidential election.
Let’s take a look at the 1860 Presidential election results.




Not the blue and red maps we’re used to on Election Day, right?
How many political parties do you see represented on the map?
Did the North vote as a bloc for a certain candidate? Did the South do the same?
What do you think the voting results in the South in 1860 tell us about what is going on in the
nation?
Myth 2: The South always voted Republican.
Let’s take a look at the 1872-1876 Presidential election results.
By 1872, all southern states have been welcomed back into the Union and Reconstruction is in full swing.
Compare the voting results between the two elections.
 How are southerners voting differently between the two elections?
 What do you think caused the shift from voting Republican to Democrat in just four years? (Redeemers?)
 Looking at both elections, where are the Republicans strongholds in the South? (Southern Louisiana, eastern
Virginia, eastern Tennessee).
Let’s take a look at county voting results from 1840 up to 1876.
 Has one party always dominated the South?
 We can see that the dominance of one party (the Democrats) in the South in 1876 really had never been seen in
history up to that point. What do you think caused this? (Unity of old Confederate states against Republican
Reconstructionists, lingering hatred of Lincoln?)
Let’s continue to watch the presidential election results by county over time from 1876 to 1960
 Which party dominates the South? Why do you think the Republican strongholds in Louisiana, Mississippi and
eastern Virginia dissipated while it remained in eastern Tennessee?
Let’s look at the presidential election voting turnout from the same time period (1876 to 1960) to find one answer to that
complicated question?
 What do you see happening to election turnouts in the South over time?
 Why are the election turnouts decreasing in the South, especially in the Republican stronghold areas we pointed out
earlier?
 Think about who lives in those areas. Do you think the people living in those parts are majority black or white? What
do we know about voting restrictions for African Americans during that time?
 What kind of population is found in eastern Tennessee? Why would Republicans have continued to wine eastern
Tennessee counties?
 Why do you think Republican voting is coming back in the 1950s and 1960s? What laws are being passed and what
debates are going on in the country at that time? (Civil and Voting Rights Act passed, huge marches across the
country for equality)
 Do you think the resurgence of the Republican Party in the South in the 1956 election is the same source behind the
1964 resurgence? If not, what are the differences for the Republican surge in 1956 versus 1964?
Continue looking at election results through 2008. With a few exceptions, the South has always voted Republican since
1964. One can also find a fairly predictable pattern from 1868 through about 1944.