Posts Tagged ‘elections’

The Left’s Southern Article of Faith Collides with the Data. (updated and bumped and recovered from the Wayback Machine due to Cynical Publius)

Posted: August 10, 2026 by datechguy in dablog, elections, politics, race card
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Prologue (8/10/26)

Today on X I noted this post from a very excellent Cynical Publius

When I saw this tweet I instantly remembered my post where I researched all of this however that was one of the posts that disappeared when I started having major blog problems (we’ll talk about the why’s for those troubles some other times) but I spent an hour or two researching & found a tweet linking to the post & was able to find the updated and bumped version from 2020.

As this lie about the south suddenly changing side with LBJ is Gospel to the left to this day rather than simply reinserting it into the sport when it was first posted I figured it deserved a full new post so here is it, unseen for years my data on when the southern states actually went GOP.

(Note, this post was originally posted on Aug 17th 2017. However the subject came up during my appearance on fault lines radio this morning so I thought I’d repost and bump it so listeners could see the actual post and data I was referring to.)

If you are even slightly a leftist such as the folks I covered on the Boston Common this weekend one of the things that you believe without question is that the only reason why the GOP has control of legislatures in the south is because of a backlash over the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965.
This has been an article of faith for years and it’s quite handy when you want to explain away uncomfortable electoral defeats. Why woo voters when you can simply cry “racism”.

It’s an easy to sell argument, after all the pre 1964 south was called the solid south for a reason. Through 1892 no former slave state (including border states) voted for a GOP presidential candidate. No state of the old confederacy voted GOP post reconstruction till Tennessee voted Harding 1920. Through 1955 when the fight for civil rights started looming large the GOP only managed to take states in the old confederacy two more times once when Eisenhower after winning World War to managed to take Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia and once in the Herbert Hoover landslide of 1928 that added North Carolina to that list.

But the real power of the Democrats in the south wasn’t in presidential elections where they were outnumbered. It was in the state legislatures, where, with the exception of Missouri which was pretty competitive in the first half of the 20th century A republican speaker of the House in the old south and most of the old slave states (I’m missing data for Delaware) just didn’t exist.

And then came Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson

In 1957 Johnson in an effort “sanitize” himself on civil rights for a presidential run pushed through the first civil rights bill post reconstruction. When he became president after JFK’s murder in 1963 he managed to get the Civil Rights act of 1964 passed doing so with only 8 votes from the old confederacy in the house and none in the senate, he followed that up with the Voting Rights act in 1965 and declaring that he would secure the black vote for Democrats for the next 2 centuries (although he used somewhat different phrasing describing the black vote, employing a word rhyming with “trigger”).

It is at this point that according to our friends on the left that the old solid racist south (including many of the slave holding border states) decided to abandon the Democrat party and started voting GOP

However there is one problem that stands in the way of that argument: The facts.

As Tip O’Neill once said all politics is local and nothing better reflects the feelings of a local electorate than a vote for a state legislator. So if the left’s meme is to be believed it shouldn’t have taken more than a few two year election cycles for a combination of mass defections and outraged old racists to fill the south with GOP speakers in their houses. So let’s take a look at a chart that lists all the old slaveholding states and see how quickly those racist southerners and old segregationists managed to flip their states to their new favorite party.

[table id=1 ]

As you can see when the data is presented the left’s article of faith runs smack dab of a factual cliff.

With the exception of a two year period of in Tennessee when a democrat defector gave the GOP the house for one term, No state of the old confederacy elected a GOP house until 1995 and even with that happened in North and South Carolina, North Carolina flipped back to the Democrats the very next election and stayed there until 2011.

Of those states only one other (Florida) joined South Carolina as a solid GOP state in the 20th century five of the states flipped this decade. And think about it. If you believe our friends on the left then Alabama the state where Martin Luther King wrote is famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail and Mississippi the state where the famous case of the murder of civil rights workers dramatized in the film Mississippi Burning took place in the 60’s were so apparently so outraged over the Civil Rights act, the Voting Rights act and LBJ that their voters they waited nearly 2 1/2 generations to vote GOP.

That’s simply not credible.

Now as this is such an article faith for our Democrat friends they will sooner imagine armies of ancient segregationists bussed from Nursing Homes on election day each years than believe the data.

Because there is a much more credible explanation as to why the left is losing the South that’s staring them in the face but that’s a post for later this week.

Update:  Heard back from the Delaware legislative librarian 9/21.  She was out on Friday but when she got back she kindly provided me both house and senate info from 1965 to present that I’ve used to update my table.  Many Thanks

A litmus test for Biden

Posted: February 20, 2024 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Deep within the bowels of The New York Times website is a blueprint of why Joe Biden is in trouble.

It took me a long time to track the analysis down because it got virtually no play on the Times’ opening web page. Maybe that’s because it shows how badly Biden is doing in the eyes of voters throughout the country.

The Times Opinion focus group included 13 undecided, independent voters. “To a striking degree, most of the participants tilted toward Mr. Trump, even though they disliked his personality,” the analysis offered.

“Almost all the voters (who range in age from 22 to 64) were most worried about the economy and how their groceries and other bills were too costly. Some were also deeply troubled by the crisis at the southern border, and some were concerned about the Israel-Gaza war and disliked U.S. aid to other countries,” the report continued.

When asked to describe Biden, the participants seemed particularly worried about his age and competence, using words like “senile” and “unfit.”

“I keep hearing the government say that things are getting better. I’d like to know who they’re asking, because I don’t see the economy getting better. I see us spending more money in our households, in the government. Here in New Hampshire, it’s never been this bad, ever,” said Robin, a 59-year-old retiree from New Hampshire. “They’re spending billions and billions of dollars on stuff that I don’t understand. Where is that going?”

Natalie, a 22-year-old college student in New Jersey, agreed. “I wanted to get my master’s, but it’s like I’m never going to be able to afford it. Where is the government’s money going? It should be going toward stuff like education. I’m never going to see loan forgiveness. I just see myself in debt forever.”

Twelve of the 13 participants said they viewed the economy as the most important issue in the election, while one chose the crisis in Israel and Gaza.

But the focus group also underlined some fundamental issues that Biden faces, particularly among ethnic groups that traditionally support Democrats.

For example, Yalena, a 22-year-old stay-at-home mom in Alabama, described Biden as “disingenuous.” Yalena, a Latina, added: ”I don’t feel like I’m being told the truth. I don’t feel like I’m being told anything upfront. I was just so disappointed — with the ounce of hope I had left — when we just started pouring money into the Israel conflict.”

Although Henry, a 60-year-old black consultant from Georgia, said he plans to vote for Biden, the president is “not inspiring at all.”

Gary, a 64-year-old driving instructor in Michigan, said he plans to vote for Trump but had some advice for the former president: “Stay off Twitter.”

Although the general election is months off, I hope DaTimes continues taling to this set of people who seem to have a better grasp of the state of the country than all of the pundits and talking heads combined.

Lori Lightfoot proves targeting opponents over Sam Bankman-Fried contributions is effective

Posted: February 5, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, crime, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Okay, Republicans, you have an easy lay-up shot at the basket. But of course, sure things, such as Red Wave midterm blowouts, can end up as air balls. 

America’s worst big city mayor, Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, is running for reelection. She has eight opponents, a couple of whom, such as Ja’Mal Green and the Chicago Teachers Union-endorsed Brandon Johnson, are extreme leftists who provide answers to the question, “Can Chicago have a worse mayor than Lori Lightfoot?

Chicago’s elections are non-partisan. In the likely scenario that no candidate achieves 50 percent of the vote in the first round of voting, which is February 28, the top two candidates face off in an April 4 runoff. As with the congressional midterms, polling has been all over the place in the mayoral race, but the top four candidates in terms of popularity appear to be Lightfoot, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, businessman and vote-buyer Willie Wilson, and US Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. 

The Chicago mayoral race is the first major election, unless you count December’s Georgia Senate runoff race, since the collapse of cryptocurrency firm FTX.

By most accounts Garcia, who endorsed Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign, was the early frontrunner in the contest. But then Lightfoot went on the attack. 

You see, Garcia’s congressional campaign fund accepted $2,900 from former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who was indicted last year for charges surrounding the collapse of the crypto currency firm. Worse, SBF’s PAC, Protect our Futures, spent over $150,000 on glossy mailers sent to Chuy’s remapped and gerrymandered 4th congressional district to introduce him to new voters for the 2022 Democratic primary. Only Garcia was running unopposed in that race. Chuy is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees cryptocurrency. The $2,900 Bankman-Fried contribution to Garcia has since been donated to charity.

And Lighfoot’s attack appears to be a solid blow against Garcia in a TV spot where she connects Garcia not only to SBF, but also to former Illinois Democratic Party chairman and state House speaker, Boss Michael Madigan, who was indicted last year, as well as Chicago’s deservedly unpopular red-light cameras. 

Most of the Lightfoot attack ad against Garcia begins at the 1:22 mark in this Fox Chicago video.

The upshot? In the two most recent polls, one that you should look at with suspicion comes from an internal survey from the Lightfoot campaign, and the other one from a suburban Republican pollster, Garcia has dropped to third place. Lighfoot’s poll has her on in the lead, the other poll has Vallas in the lead with Lighfoot close behind–but both surveys have the top two in a statistical tie. 

Garcia, although he did force Rahm Emanuel into a runoff in the 2015 mayoral race, is accustomed to comfortable elections, so it might be a struggle for Chuy to fight back.

Back to the GOP.  

Republicans, you know, or should know, what to do. Target every Democrat who has taken Sam Bankman-Fried cash so hard that voters will believe that these Dems have SBF as a running mate.

Even if it means following Lori Lightfoot’s lead.

John Ruberry regularly blogs just north off Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

O’Toole pulls a Romney Loses in Canada

Posted: September 23, 2021 by datechguy in elections, politics
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The Canadian snap election that PM Trudeau called for took place yesterday and the result was a mixed bag.

Basically Trudeau’s liberal stayed where they were with the most seats but not the majority that he was hoping for. Meanwhile conservatives who thought a bit ago that they might end up winning stayed right where they were.

“Hubris led Trudeau to call the election. He and the Liberals won the election but lost the prize they were seeking. This is only a great night for the Liberals because two weeks ago it appeared they would lose government outright something they could not fathom before they gambled on an election,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto.

That seems to be the consensus story but I think the real story was much later in the piece:

O’Toole advertised himself a year ago as a “true-blue Conservative.” He became Conservative Party leader with a pledge to “take back Canada,” but immediately started working to push the party toward the political center.

O’Toole’s strategy, which included disavowing positions held dear by his party’s base on issues such as climate change, guns and balanced budgets, was designed to appeal to a broader cross section of voters in a country that tends to be far more liberal than its southern neighbor.

So let me get this straight:

The “conservative” leader after getting the nod to go after Trudeau suddenly decides to run away from his base and the issues that got him to where he was and surprise surprise he ends up losing a winnable election because he thought a bunch of liberal Canadians given the choice between an actual liberal and liberal lite decided to vote for the real thing?

And I’m sure his base was delighted at the prospect of turning out to vote for a leader who disavowed them and their positions. Cripes was Mitt Romney running his campaign?

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