Political Science

Evans and Evans Find Ideology Main Factor in Explaining Southern White GOP Party ID

Posted Jun 13, 2017

                 What explains Southern Whites identification with the Republican Party in the 21^st Century? Scholars of Southern politics have spent decades explaining the transformation of Southern whites from the Democratic to the Republican Party. For much of the post-Civil War period, Americans and Southerners spoke of the Solid South as Democrats consistently won all of the South’s Electoral College, gubernatorial, congressional, and other state and local offices. Practically all Southerners claimed Democratic Party identification, except in a few mountain Republican areas, which helped explain Democratic dominance. Beginning with the revolt of Dixiecrats against Harry Truman’s re-nomination in 1948, the South began a realignment toward the GOP which eventually produced another Solid South – but one where the Republican Party consistently wins the South’s Electoral College, gubernatorial, congressional, and other state and local offices (Nardulli 2005).

                This change in party identification among Southern whites took decades. Using American National Election Studies (ANES) survey data from 1952 to 2000, Knuckey (2006) finds that Democratic Party identification had a high of 80% in 1952 and slowly began to decline until by the 1990s the GOP was the plurality party among whites in the South. By 2000 and continuing through 2012, ANES data shows that Southern Whites’ Republican party identification became the majority, even reaching 59% in 2002 and then slightly declining to 56% by 2012. Approximately 35% of whites identified as Democrats during this period with Independents ranging between 6-14%. In explaining these changes through the 1990s, Knuckey (2006) examined the four most common explanations that scholars posit (race, social class polarization, social conservatism, and a general ideological realignment). Knuckey found that a general ideological realignment and social and class polarization explain much of the national move toward the GOP, including the South. However, race and abortion are explanatory factors in the South but not the rest of the nation.

                In this paper, Baker Evans, with an assist from Dr. Evans, extends Knuckey’s analysis to Southern White party identification in the 21^st Century and finds that ideology continues to be the most important factor in explaining the Republican Party identification of Southern Whites but that racial resentment, class, moral traditionalism, and age also contribute to Southern White party identification roles. In the remainder of this summary, we discuss the hypotheses that would explain GOP party identification in the South, the means we test these hypotheses, our results, and then explain the larger significance of these results.

Explanations for Republican Party Identification Among Southern Whites

                In the Southern politics literature, scholars posit four primary explanations for realignment among Southern whites: race, economics, social conservatism, and ideology. First, race has been key to explaining Southern politics since Key's (1949) magisterial study of Southern politics. Since that time, scholars have continued to use race as an explanation due to the two parties diverging on race issues beginning with Barry Goldwater’s nomination in 1964 and continuing with the GOP’s Southern Strategy of trying to woo Southern whites to the GOP banner under the banner of social, economic, and racial conservatism. However, outright racism is unusual today and there has been significant change in the attitudes of Southerners and Americas to where the racial attitudes of Southerners and non-Southerners are no longer different (Schuman, Steer, and Bobo 1985). Instead, race plays a more subtle role as appeals can made in policies and symbols that have no explicit connection to race. These covert appeals, via welfare reform, law and order, etc. fall under what political scientists call racial resentment (Kinder and Sanders 1996).

                Second, social class polarization may explain change. As the South moved from an agricultural based economy to an industrial based economy, many Southerners became more affluent. As the South became more urban and suburban and the middle class continued to increase in size, more Southerners began to see their economic self-interest reflected in Republican economic policy that allowed people to keep more of their money via tax cuts and smaller government as people could self-insure (see Shafer and Johnston 2006).

                Third, the values divide can explain the change of Southern Whites toward the GOP. While the values divide is seen throughout the nation, it tends to play a larger role in the South. The South has the largest percentage of evangelicals in the country which contributes to its social conservatism (Black and Black 2002). Moreover, the Christian Right has played a larger role in Southern politics as abortion, pornography, drug policy, gay rights, etc. are more common political issues that historically favor the GOP in this region (see Green et al 2002).

                Fourth, there is a general ideological realignment in this nation as liberals and conservatives “sort” into the Democratic and Republican Parties respectfully (see Black and Black 2002). Since the South has historically been a conservative region, it was only natural that conservative Southerners would begin to identify with the more conservative party and move toward the GOP. This move to the South began in earnest during the Reagan presidency as Reagan adopted more conservative positions than Republicans historically making it easier for Americans, including Southerners, to more easily identify the party of their ideology.

                Since there are other factors that may explain party identification beyond these four variables, we control for the following variables. First, age should explain party identification as older white Southerners tend to be more Republican. Second, the more often one attends church, the more one’s theology should influence one’s decision and make one more conservative. Third, members of union households should be more Democratic and unions spend a good deal of time explaining its views on issues to its members which usually line up with the Democratic Party. Fourth, Catholic social thought is both socially conservative and more economically liberal which should produce adherents who may be more moderate than evangelicals who are usually more socially and economically conservative. Fifth, we expect Deep South states to have higher Republican Party identification because they are the more conservative of the Southern states while the Rim states usually went Republican first and are now seeing higher Democratic Party identification.

Data and Methods

                To test these hypotheses, we use data from the American National Election Studies for 2002, 2004, 2008, and 2012. Due to the creation of the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies, ANES no longer surveys voters in midterm years so there is no data for 2006 and 2010. Since not all questions are asked consistently, this update of Knuckey does not include all of the variables that he tested. Our dependent variable, or the variable that we seek to explain, is the standard seven point party identification measure of Strong Democrat, Weak Democrat, Independent leans Democrat, Independent, Independent leans Republican, Weak Republican, and Strong Republican.

Four our independent variables, or those variables that we expect to explain the change in party identification, racial resentment is an additive measure that considers responses dealing with blacks vis-à-vis other ethnic groups, the impact of slavery, effort, and just dessert. The index is coded so that the lower values are the more racially tolerant position and higher numbers reflect racial resentment. Social class is measured as income and whether one is a member of a profession (e.g., attorney, medicine) or hold a managerial position or clerical for those in sales positions. Moral traditionalism is an additive measure that considers responses to impact of newer lifestyles, moral relativism, family values, and tolerance. The index is coded so that lower values reflect a morally tolerant position and high scores reflect moral traditionalism. The importance of abortion is measured on a scale that assesses a respondent’s position on whether abortion should be legal. Ideology is measured on a seven point scale that ranges from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. Most of the other variables are self-explanatory such as age, church attendance, union household, and Catholic. A more complete explanation of these variables are provided at the end in Appendix A.

Results

This study uses multivariate linear regression to explain the party identification of Southern Whites. Overall, the results point to racial resentment, class, moral traditionalism, ideology, and age as factors that explain party identification in the South which largely support our hypotheses. Among these variables, ideology tends to play a more significant role in party identification.

First, the results in Table 1 continue to suggest that ideology is the most important factor in explaining Republican Party identification. The unstandardized beta shows that for every change from one ideological response to another (e.g, moving from moderate to slightly conservative) one moves almost 2/3 of a point toward Republican Party identification on the seven point scale. When we look at the standardized betas that rescale variables so that a one-unit change has a common meaning for all other variables, ideology is over three times as important as racial resentment and four times as important as moral traditionalism which are the second and third most important variables. This result suggests that most change toward the GOP is as conservative Southern Whites move toward their natural party based on ideology.

 Table 1

Regression of Party Identification of Southern Whites

 **Significant at the .01 level

                Second, the results for racial resentment continue to show that race plays a role in Southern politics. While the country and the South has made tremendous progress in race relations over the past 50 years, these results show that racial conservatism explains some of the Republican gains. These gains have come especially in the past 25 years as Knuckey (2006) finds racial resentment a statistically significant explanation in the 1990s but not 1980s. This finding also differs from Knuckey as we find that racial resentment explains GOP party identification among non-Southern whites (results not shown here) in the 2000s.

                Third, moral traditionalism, unsurprisingly, explains GOP growth in the South. As the more conservative and evangelical portion of the country, “values” are more important and can sometimes trump economics. While social issues may not help the Republican Party nationwide, these results suggests that they will continue to play an important role in Southern politics. However unlike Knuckey (2006), abortion does not influence party identification among Southern Whites, though it does among non-Southern whites. Perhaps other social issues, like gay rights, are rising in importance among Southerners.

Fourth, social class plays a role as increasing income explains GOP identification. The South continues to grow faster than other parts of the country and this economic growth has led to greater prosperity and, consequently, greater support for the GOP. However, professional and clerical have the expected positive relationship but is not statistically significant. Perhaps, the Democratic growth among professionals as first predicted in Judis and Texeira’s Emerging Democratic Majority (2002) is cutting into Republican support as these individuals tend to be more economically conservative but socially moderate or liberal and may reject the GOP’s social conservatism as the country becomes more libertine.

Fifth, age explains party identification as younger voters tend to be more Republican which continues the trend that Knuckey found in the 80s and 90s. Older voters still remember the days of the one party Democratic South which may lead them to be slightly more Democratic. Younger Southern Whites grew up in the Reagan Era and may have stronger Republican Party identification. Perhaps as time passes, the failures of the Bush years and greater appeal of Barack Obama may lead to higher Democratic Party identification among young people but even the youngest white Southerners are still more Republican than their non-Southern counterparts.

Among our remaining control variables, gender, union household, Deep South, and Catholic are not statistically significant. While the variables are in the expected direction, they are not significant. These results suggest that there is less of a gender gap in the South and that traditionally weak unions and the Catholic church in the South cannot counteract the overall more Republican environment. However among non-Southerners, union household, Catholic, and Jewish do predict more Democratic Party identification. Even with continued talk of a gender gap, gender is not statistically significant in predicting Democratic Party identification which suggests that the gender gap may reflect differences between women of different races as white women are more Republican overall.

Conclusions

These results suggest that Republicans will continue to dominate Southern politics in the forseeable future. White Southerners are predominantly Republican which means that the GOP will continue to win state, local, and federal offices. As the country continues to sort into geographic, racial, cultural, and ideological enclaves, these results suggest that the two parties will continue to get more ideologically extreme. This ideological polarization will hurt Democrats more as the South still remains largely right of center which means very conservative Republicans are still closer to the median Southern voter than a liberal Democrat.

However, the continued growth of minorities may allow Democrats in more diverse states to make electoral breakthroughs. The South has large African-American populations and growing Latino populations that could combine with liberal whites to start electing Democrats in Rim States such as Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and possibly Deep South states such as Georgia.

Finally, the continued conservatism of Southern Whites may hurt the Republican Party nationally. The nation as a whole is moving more to the left. Since the South is the GOP’s base, the GOP will continue to nominate more conservative candidates who may be out of touch with the nation as a whole which will make it more difficult for the GOP to win national office in the future.

References

ANES Data Center Study Pages Time Series Cumulative Data File. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 May 2017.

 Black, Earl and Merle Black.  2002.  The Rise of Southern Republicans.  Cambridge:  Belknap Press of

                Harvard University. 

 Green, John C., Lyman A. Kellstedt, Corwin E. Smidt, and James L. Guth. 2008. “The Soul of the South:

                Religion and Southern Politics in the New Millenium.” In The New Politics of the Old South, 2^nd

                ed. Charles S. Bullock and Mark J. Rozell, eds. New York: Roman & Littlefield.

 Judis, John and Ruy Texeira. 2002. The Emerging Democratic Majority. NY: Scribner.

 Key, V. O. 1949. Southern Politics in State and Nation.  New York: Knopf. 

 Kinder, Donald and Lynn Sanders. 1996. Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals. Chicago:

                University of Chicago Press.

 Knuckey, Jonathan. 2006. "Explaining Recent Changes in the Partisan Identifications of Southern

                Whites." Political Research Quarterly 59 (March): 57-70.

 Nardulli, Peter F. 2005. Popular Efficacy in a Democratic Era. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

 Schuman, Howard, Charlotte Steer and Lawrence Bobo. 1985. Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and

                Interpretation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

 Shafer, Byron E., and Richard Johnston. 2006. The End of Southern Exceptionalism. Cambridge, MA:

                Harvard University Press.

Appendix A

Specific Coding of Variables

Party Identification:

1= strong Democrat, 2= weak Democrat, 3= independent Democrat, 4=

Independent, 5= independent Republican, 6= weak Republican, 7= strong Republican

Racial Resentment: Additive index based on the following four items:

1.            Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities over-came prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.

2.            Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.

3.            It’s really just a matter of some people trying hard enough; if blacks would try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

4.            Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve.

For each item, 1= strongly agree, 2= agree somewhat, 3= neither agree nor disagree, 4=

disagree somewhat, 5= disagree strongly (Note: items were recoded so that the high pole indicates racial resentment.)

Social Class:

                Household Income:

1= 0 to 16 percentile, 2= 17 to 33 percentile, 3= 34 to 67 percentile, 4= 68 to 95 percentile, 5= 96 to 100 percentile.

Profession/managerial: 1= Professional, technical and kindred workers; managers, officials and proprietors and 0 Otherwise

White Collar-Clerical/Sales: 1= Clerical and kindred workers, sales workers and 0 Otherwise

Moral Traditionalism: Additive index based on the following four items:

1.            The newer lifestyles are contributing to the breakdown of our society.

2.            The world is always changing, and we should adjust our view of moral behavior to those changes.

3.            This country would have fewer problems if there were more emphasis on traditional family ties.

4.            We should be more tolerant of people who chooses to live according to their own moral standards, even if they are very different from our own.

For each item, 1= strongly agree, 2= agree somewhat, 3= neither agree nor disagree, 4=

disagree somewhat, 5= disagree strongly (Note: items were recoded so that the high pole indicates moral traditionalism.)

Abortion:

                Four-point scale, 1= By law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice, 2= The law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest or danger to the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established, 3= The law should permit abortion only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger, 4= By law, abortion should never be permitted.

Ideological Identification: 

1= extremely liberal, 2= liberal, 3= slightly liberal, 4= moderate/middle-of-the-road, 5= slightly conservative, 6= conservative, 7= extremely conservative

Gender:

                1= Women

                0= Men

Age:

                Age in years

Union Household:

                1= Member of household is union member

                0= No member of household is a union member

Church Attendance:

                1= Never

                2= A few times a year

                3= Once or twice a month

                4= Almost every week

                5= Every week or more frequently

South:

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia

Deep South:

                Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina

Rim South:

                Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia