Politics of the Southern United States
[2] From the Reconstruction era to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, pockets of the Southern United States were characterized as being "authoritarian enclaves".
The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868 placed most of the Confederate states under military rule (except Tennessee), which required Union Army governors to approve appointed officials and candidates for election.
They enfranchised African American citizens and required voters to recite an oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, effectively discouraging still-rebellious individuals from voting, and led to Republican control of many state governments.
However, the Dixiecrats were weakened when most Southern Democratic leaders (such as Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia and "Boss" E. H. Crump of Tennessee) refused to support the party.
Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were highly influential in carrying out a strategy of non-violent protests and demonstrations.
Republicans during this time would only control parts of the mountains districts in southern Appalachia and competed for statewide office in the former border states.
[citation needed] The adoption of the first civil rights plank by the 1948 convention and President Truman's Executive Order 9981, which provided for equal treatment and opportunity for African-American military service members, divided the Democratic party's northern and southern wings.
Modernization had brought factories, national businesses and a more diverse culture to cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte and Houston.
[32] After the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that outlawed segregation in schools in 1954, integration caused enormous controversy in the white South.
[35] By the 1990s Republicans were starting to win elections at the statewide and local level throughout the South, even though Democrats retained majorities in several state legislatures through the 2000s and 2010s.
[36][37] A key element in the change was the transformation of evangelical white Protestants in the south from largely nonpolitical to heavily Republican.
But over the course of the next decade or so, the GOP made gains among white Southerners generally and evangelicals in particular, virtually eliminating this regional disparity.
"[38] Exit polls in the 2004 presidential election showed that Republican George W. Bush led Democrat John Kerry by 70–30% among Southern whites, who comprised 71% of the voters there.
[42] However, in 2021, Virginians would elect Glenn Youngkin as Governor and Republicans would retake control of the House of Delegates with a 52–48 majority.
[43] During the early 2020s, Georgia began to see itself become electorally competitive for Republicans again as Joe Biden won the state in 2020 election.
[44] Warnock would be elected to a full term in 2022 even as Republicans swept all statewide races and retained control of the state legislature.
[45] Research studies in American political affiliations demonstrate that an "uneducated"(lack of post-secondary school) white populace tends to vote Republican.
[48] This ended with Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court case, which ruled in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide on June 26, 2015.
[50] Republican-majority legislatures in Florida, Tennessee and Texas pushed for increased restrictions on transgender rights and gender-nonconforming expression in the 2020s.
While the general trend in the South has shown an increasing dominance of the Republican party since the 1960s, Southern politics in the 21st century are still contentious and competitive.
All the former Confederate Southern states supported Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary except Texas (won by native son Ted Cruz).
