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Article Excerpt
The distinctiveness of the South is a prominent feature of the American political landscape, and its contours have regularly been evident in postreform presidential nomination politics. (1) In 1976 and 1992, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton used their status as Southern governors to their advantage, turning their relative conservatism into an asset in a region where Democrats were less liberal than elsewhere in the country. On the Republican side, the decidedly conservative tilt of the GOP primary electorate has helped solidify victories for candidates such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. And in 2008, the regional appeal of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee allowed him to string together five Southern victories, delaying John McCain's eventual claiming of the nomination. Often decisive, the role played by Southern voters in presidential primaries has always been substantial.
All of these contests have taken place against the backdrop of a secular realignment in the South, as white voters have steadily abandoned the Democratic Party in favor of the GOP (Black and Black 2002). Yet for all that is known about the realignment's effect on voting behavior and the outcomes of general presidential elections (e.g., Hillygus and Shields 2008), we know relatively little about the consequences for nomination politics. Just as the politics of the New South has altered the strategic landscape of the fall contests (e.g., Schaller 2006), it has also brought about major changes in the parties' primary electorates, voters who serve as powerful gatekeepers--and potential kingmakers--on the road to the White House. And because the South's primary voters have consistently been integral to the fortunes of both parties' eventual nominees, their changing composition has important implications for the future of presidential electoral politics.
In this article, we trace changes in the Southern Democratic and Republican primary electorates between 1988 and 2008 to explore the implications of the regional realignment for nomination politics. Using a series of statewide exit polls, we show that the Democratic electorate has grown strikingly more liberal, more racially diverse, and less heavily Protestant over the last 20 years. Meanwhile, having undergone the bulk of its transformation by the end of the Reagan era, the Republican Party had by 2008 solidified into a conservative, almost exclusively white primary electorate. We also identify a growing partisan gender gap in the South.
These changes have implications for both parties. On the Democratic side, it appears less likely that a centrist white Democrat will be able to use the South as a launching pad to the nomination, as did Carter and Clinton. No longer is there a distinctly conservative flavor to the preferences of the Democratic electorate, because those voters have left the party for the GOP. At the same time, the growing proportion of minorities in the Democratic electorate produces opportunities for a candidate such as Barack Obama, who in 2008 secured major, and essential, victories in the South on the strength of overwhelming support from black voters. The homogeneity of the GOP, on the other hand, means that Republican candidates with a distinctive conservatism may continue to prove successful in the South.
One of the critical effects of these changes is that whereas the South used to be a region that induced more similarity in the parties' nominees--owing to the relative conservatism of the Democratic electorate--this no longer is the case. The continuing polarization of the Southern Democratic and Republican parties suggests that the ideological distance between the major presidential nominees will continue to widen. Political activists, in the form of primary voters, exert a centrifugal influence on presidential candidates (Miller and Schofield 2008), pulling them away from the median general election voter. The GOP may be the beneficiary of this ideological re-sorting among the region's Democratic and Republican primary voters, though the party will need to emerge from its current state of disarray before that can happen. The principal disadvantage of Southern Democrats in the contemporary era--and, by extension, the national Democratic Party--is their consistent selection of presidential nominees who are perceived by Southern general election voters as more ideologically distant from them than Republican nominees (Hayes and McKee 2008).
Party Coalitions and Presidential Primaries
The secular realignment in the South began with the Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. As conservative whites shed their Democratic affiliation and moved into the Republican Party, the GOP has become increasingly strong region-wide (Black and Black 2002; Shafer and Johnston 2006). For example, George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 won every Southern state, and since the 1990s, the GOP has dramatically increased its share of statewide offices (Hayes and McKee 2008).
While this trend has been well documented, the transformation of the parties' primary electorates has undergone much less empirical scrutiny. But we argue that this is critical, because the ideological composition of primary electorates yields insight into both the balance of power in general election contests and the broader implications of realignments. Realignments result in the reshuffling of the social groups that make up political parties' coalitions (Petrocik 1981, 1987), and coalitional change can perhaps be most easily seen in the makeup of a party's primary electorate.
Primary electorates represent the base of a party--the activists and committed partisans who are intensely involved and engaged in politics. Their views constitute the core of the party platform, which candidates and party leaders must attend to as part of coalition maintenance. In American presidential politics, primary electorates play an important role as gatekeepers, determining which candidates have sufficient support within each party. Candidates design strategies that are intended to appeal to the elements of the party's coalitions who are known to participate in party primaries. For example, evangelical voters in Iowa's caucuses are often targeted by GOP aspirants, as they represent about 60% of the Republican electorate. (2) Indeed, primary voters often act as kingmakers--especially in the South, where over the years strong support in a string of Southern states has secured presidential nominations for both party's candidates.
This is what has made the South a central part of the dynamic of American presidential primaries. The region's voters are typically more conservative than their non-Southern counterparts (Valentino and Sears 2005). That, of course, is why the Democratic Party instituted Super Tuesday in 1988. In the hopes of giving a candidate less aligned with the liberal wing of the party a better chance at getting elected, party leaders thought that a regional primary would likely produce a candidate who could do better in a general election, but the effort did not succeed (Norrander 1992). And this dynamic has meant that certain candidates have been able to tap into Southern voters because of their ability to target particular elements of their party's coalition. Carter's victory in 1976 was aided by his popularity among Southerners. Jesse Jackson, for example, won the state of Louisiana in 1984 and 1988, in large part because the state's Democratic primary electorate is heavily African American. Huckabee's success in 2008 came from his Southern roots as well as his standing as an evangelical and his message of conservative populism that resonated with many Southern voters.
But the continuing realignment in the South means that there have been major changes in the composition of the primary electorates. And as these electorates have changed, this means that the kinds of candidates who can succeed in the region likely will change. Our central aim here is to probe the kinds of changes that have occurred in the Southern Democratic and Republican primary electorates and explore the implications for presidential politics.
Data
The data employed in this study come from primary exit polls conducted by CBS News/New York Times (1984-1988), the Voter News Service (1992-2000), and the National Election Pool (2004-2008). The main analysis consists of...
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