Reverse Coattails in the South

by Karl Kurtz

We begin in the South with a new series of region by region reports on interesting aspects of the 2008 state legislative elections.  The map shows party control of state legislatures in the region.  The South was the only region in which Republicans gained legislative seats and provided the most significant switches to Republican chamber control in the Tennessee House and the Oklahoma Senate.

My favorite map of this election was the one in the New York Times showing presidential vote shifts between the parties by county from 2004 to 2008, not because it is revealing about the presidential outcome but for what it says about state legislative results in the South.  It shows a solid swath of red (counties that voted more for McCain than for Bush) from western West Virginia through southeastern Kentucky and moving west through virtually all of Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Here's the simplified version of that map showing only the counties in which McCain did better than Bush:

In four of these states in the red belt--Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia--Republicans had a net gain of 28 state legislative seats and captured control of the Tennessee House and the Oklahoma Senate.  In the South as a whole Republicans netted only six seats, so these four states were the vanguard for the GOP in 2008 (Alabama, Louisiana, Maryland--yes, we know that Maryland is not usually considered to be part of the South, but in interstate organizational politics it is--Mississippi and Virginia did not have state legislative elections). 

As the Times explains, "Rural white counties from Kentucky to Texas took a different tack from the rest of the country, moving strongly toward Mr. McCain."  The state legislative results in these states suggest that Sen. Obama's presence on the ballot had reverse coattail effects in the down-ballot legislative races.

The legislative chamber in the South in which the Democrats made the biggest gains is the Texas House of Representatives, where they had a net gain of three seats to reduce the Republican majority to 76-74.  Republican Rep. Linda Harper Brown (an NCSL stalwart) won her race by only 29 votes, so a recount in that race could throw the Texas House into a tie.  In either case, there will once again be a spirited battle for the speakership in Texas, with incumbent Tom Craddick likely to be challenged both within his own party and by the Democrats.  Stay tuned on this one.

Of the southern state legislatures controlled by the Democrats, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi are holdovers from the old days of the solid South and have not been under Republican control since Reconstruction. 

Now that both chambers in Tennessee have gone Republican for the first time in history (since the advent of the post Civil War two-party system), Alabama is the new answer to a legislative trivia question: What is the state with the longest continuous control of both chambers by the Democrats?  Alabama was last controlled by Republicans in 1868.

North Carolina and West Virginia were the only states in the South that had a gubernatorial election.  Democrat Bev Perdue defeated Republican Pat McCrory in the Tarheel State, and Democrat Joe Manchin was reelected in the Mountaineer State.  Republicans hold all of the governors' mansions in the deep South from South Carolina west to Texas.  All of the governors north of the most southern tier are Democrats.  Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas have unified Republican control of both legislative chambers and the governor's office.  Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia are under unified Democratic control.  The remaining states in the South have divided control of state government.

For a national report on the election, see StateVote 2008 and  "Election 2008--Making History."  See also "Small Gains for Democrats in the West," "Party Balance in Midwestern Legislatures," and "The 'Solid North.'"

Comments

[Chris Kromm]

I'm not sure your evidence supports your headline. The biggest uniting feature of the "red swath" in the NY Times map is Appalachia, which of course is distinct from "the South." This also correlates to which states showed gains in their legislatures.

Aside from Appalachia, we see Arkansas and Oklahoma; east Texas; and southern Louisiana, which has a large chunk of its African-American population displaced by recent storms.

On the other hand, we saw down-ticket Democrats undoubtedly benefiting from Obama's presence on the ticket in North Carolina, Virginia and the Georgia U.S. Senate race.

So is it accurate to say that Obama has "reverse coattails in the South?" Probably not.

If anything, the map and results show the distinction between the Black Belt and Appalachia.

[Karl Kurtz]

Chris is right that it would be more accurate to say that Obama had reverse coattails in PARTS of the South.

In regard to his concern about presidential coattail effects in other parts of the South, I think it's clear that my post deals with state legislative elections, not with the U.S. Senate in North Carolina, Virginia or Georgia. Virginia didn't have state legislative elections. In Georgia Democrats picked up a grand total of one seat in the state House, none in the Senate. In North Carolina and Florida Democrats had a net loss of one seat in both state legislative chambers combined.

So, to carefully qualify my points, McCain's performance in West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma appears to have benefited Republicans in the narrow strip of northern-tier southern states. The Obama vote had no apparent effect in aiding Democratic state legislative candidates in the remainder of the South, especially not in Florida, Georgia or North Carolina.

[Mark]

Arkansas is also under unified Democratic control. Please revise.

[Karl Kurtz]

Thanks (again) for the correction, Mark. My face is red, but the original text has been corrected. But here's what I'm wondering: This post has been up for a week. Why has nobody else caught this error? I fear three equally bad alternative explanations: (a) nobody is reading this stuff, (b) nobody cares, or (c) nobody knows anything. Hmmm...

[Willard Taylor]

I care. :)

Thanks for the post it was very useful.