America's Red-Headed Stepchild

While there has been much discussion about the significance of the United States' electing an African-American president, there has also recently been some analysis of the importance of how a black president won (and how he didn’t).

Breaking the notion that a “Southern Strategy” is necessary to win presidential elections, Senator Barack Obama won last Tuesday not only by a large margin of electoral college votes, but also without the South (excluding prosperous Virginia and North Carolina). While many Democratic voters who had been ambivalent about Mr. Obama for whatever reason gradually returned to the Democratic fold starting mid-September, anecdotal evidence from the New York Times suggests that in many Southern states wariness about Mr. Obama’s race remained, with some individuals even voting to prevent a black president from entering office.

Although the Republican bent to Southern votes was not dramatic as the New York Times would imply—like the rest of the nation, there was a shift towards the Democratic party—it is still interesting that those states in the 2008 election that voted Democratic most closely to (or even below) their 2004 levels were mostly Southern. White reaction to a black candidate in the deep South, however, may have been understated, given an increase in black voters. While subgroup analysis of exit polls is always problematic, it would be interesting to compare the relative increase of the black vote in those “cutting even” states with the drop, if any, of the white Democratic vote in states such as Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

Regardless of why President-elect Obama did not win the South, that an election can be won without the largest section of the country is significant for the future of American politics. The disproportionately Democratic under-30 vote would seem to hint that this leftward shift throughout the nation may not solely be due to voter reaction to the last eight years under Mr. Bush-it may signal a new generation of Democratic voters. If this holds true, the South may not be the only group left behind; an increasingly conservative Republican Party may find itself drifting further from the American people as well.