Bound Volume Number
4
Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Summer 8-9-2017
Capstone Advisor
Margaret Susan Thompson
Honors Reader
Danielle Thomsen
Capstone Major
Political Science
Capstone College
Arts and Science
Audio/Visual Component
no
Keywords
local politics, american political history
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Social Sciences
Subject Categories
American Politics
Abstract
From 1876 until 1964, the Democratic Party held virtual dictatorial control over the American South. Beginning after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that year’s presidential candidacy of anti-Civil Rights Act Republican Barry Goldwater, the South shifted reliably into the Republican column for presidential elections. Democrats still held a majority of all other offices in the region until the mid-1990s. This paper examines public opinion data in the American South, as well as partisan change in four Southern states, with an emphasis on the first time each state elected a Republican governor. I find that in each state, local issues played a major role in the election of the first Republican governor, and that one or several powerful statewide Democrats could stave off the party’s decline in the state.
Recommended Citation
Amico, Alexander, "All Politics is Local: How the South Became Republican" (2017). Honors Capstone Projects - All. 994.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/994
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
