Democrats are all but extinct in the South

(conducted Dec. 2-4)

WPA Research 57% 33% 10%

(conducted Nov. 24-25)

The likely win by Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy in a runoff election would complete a near-sweep this year of Southern Senate seats and governorships, in 10 of the 11 states of the old Confederacy. The Democrats’ only victory was in Virginia, where Sen. Mark Warner barely survived a stunning surge by Republican Ed Gillespie.

The Louisiana race is emblematic of the trouble Democrats faced in 2014 and are likely to confront for years. The party is widely regarded in the South as “hostile and indifferent” to the interests of white working-class voters, said Merle Black, a Southern politics expert at Emory University.

Landrieu, a three-term senator, won 42 percent in the Nov. 4 election. Cassidy got 41 percent, and conservative Rob Maness won 14 percent. Because no one got a majority, the top two finishers vie in Saturday’s runoff, with Cassidy likely to claim most of Maness’ support.

November’s exit polls illustrate Landrieu’s challenge. Landrieu barely got 1 of 5 white votes, about two-thirds of the electorate, and 94 percent of the black vote.

Those patterns were repeated throughout the South. In nine other Southern states with Senate race exit polls, Warner did the best among whites, winning 37 percent. Five Southern Democrats got 22 percent or less.

A Landrieu loss would be the latest blow to Democrats. Other than Virginia, only Florida has a Democratic senator or governor, once Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe retires in January. Sen. Bill Nelson was re-elected to a third term in 2012.

Part of the Republican success results from the uniqueness of 2014, when Southern Democratic incumbents were up for reelection in state where President Barack Obama was deeply unpopular.

It was the latest chapter in a drama that’s been building for 50 years. Democrats had a stranglehold on the “Solid South” through the 1960s. But as President Lyndon B. Johnson famously said after he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan wooed conservatives, particularly in the South, with his strong anti-big-government rhetoric.Democrats tended to continue ruling the South’s state and local governments, but as those officeholders left, Republicans replaced them. The party built a farm team of candidates who had begin reaching Congress and statehouses by the 1990s.

Among the class of 2014, Arkansas Sen.-elect Tom Cotton and Louisiana’s Cassidy are members of the U.S. House of Representatives. North Carolina Sen.-elect Thom Tillis is the speaker of the North Carolina House. Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott is the state’s attorney general, and Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal is a former congressman.

Some Republicans warn that while the party has momentum, it can’t declare a lock on the South. They caution that this year’s Republican Southern triumph was very much the result of Obama’s deep unpopularity.

Former South Carolina Gov. James Hodges, a Democrat, predicted that candidates who can separate themselves from the national Democratic Party might rise again.

“Instead of trying to sell the Democratic brand,” he said, “they need to sell themselves.”