Editing Southern Democrats (section)

==History==
===1828–1861===
{{Main|History of the United States Democratic Party}}
The title of "Democrat" has its beginnings in the South, going back to the founding of the [[Democratic-Republican Party]] in 1793 by [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[James Madison]]. It held to small government principles and distrusted the national government. Foreign policy was a major issue. After being the dominant party in [[Politics in the United States|U.S. politics]] from 1801 to 1829, the Democratic-Republicans split into two factions by 1828: the federalist [[National Republican Party (United States)|National Republicans]] (who became the [[Whig Party (United States)|Whigs]]), and the Democrats. The Democrats and Whigs were evenly balanced in the 1830s and 1840s. However, by the 1850s, the Whigs disintegrated. Other opposition parties emerged but the Democrats were dominant. [[Northern Democrats]] were in serious opposition to Southern Democrats on the issue of slavery; Northern Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas, believed in [[Popular Sovereignty]]—letting the people of the territories vote on slavery. The Southern Democrats, reflecting the views of the late [[John C. Calhoun]], insisted slavery was national.

The Democrats controlled the national government from 1853 until 1861, and presidents Pierce and Buchanan were friendly to Southern interests. In the North, the newly formed anti-slavery [[History of the Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]] came to power and dominated the electoral college. In the [[U.S. presidential election, 1860|1860 presidential election]], the Republicans nominated [[Abraham Lincoln]], but the divide among Democrats led to the nomination of two candidates: [[John C. Breckinridge]] of Kentucky represented Southern Democrats, and [[Stephen A. Douglas]] of Illinois represented Northern Democrats. Nevertheless, the Republicans had a majority of the electoral vote regardless of how the opposition split or joined and Abraham Lincoln was elected.

===1861–1933===
[[File:DemocraticSolidSouth 1876-1964.png|thumb|upright=1.15|Arkansas voted Democratic in all 23 presidential elections from 1876 through 1964; other states were not quite as solid but generally supported Democrats for president.]]
After the election of [[Abraham Lincoln]], Southern Democrats led the charge to secede from the [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] and establish the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate States]]. The [[United States Congress]] was dominated by Republicans; a notable exception was Democrat [[Andrew Johnson]] of [[Tennessee]], the only senator from a state in rebellion to reject secession. The [[Border states (American Civil War)|Border States]] or Border South of Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri of the Upper South were torn by political turmoil. Kentucky and Missouri were both governed by pro-secessionist Southern Democratic Governors who vehemently rejected [[President Lincoln's 75,000 Volunteers|Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops]]. Kentucky and Missouri both held secession conventions, but neither officially declared secession, leading to split Unionist and Confederate state governments in both states. Southern Democrats in Maryland faced a Unionist Governor [[Thomas Holliday Hicks]] and the Union army. Armed with the suspension of ''[[habeas corpus]]'' and Union troops, Governor Hicks was able to stop Maryland's secession movement. Maryland was the only state south of the Mason–Dixon line whose governor affirmed Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops.

After secession, the Democratic vote in the North split between the [[War Democrats]] and the Peace Democrats or "[[Copperhead (politics)|Copperheads]]". The War Democrats voted for Lincoln in the [[1864 United States presidential election|1864 election]], and Lincoln had a War Democrat — [[Andrew Johnson]] — on his ticket. In the South, during Reconstruction the White Republican element, called "[[Scalawags]]" became smaller and smaller as more and more joined the Democrats. In the North, most War Democrats returned to the Democrats, and when the "[[Panic of 1873]]" hit, the Republican Party was blamed and the Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives in 1875. The Democrats emphasized that since Jefferson and Jackson they had been the party of [[states rights]], which added to their appeal in the White South.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Democrats, led by the dominant Southern wing, had a strong representation in Congress. They won both houses in 1912 and elected [[Woodrow Wilson]], a New Jersey academic with deep Southern roots and a strong base among the Southern middle class. The Republican Party regained Congress in 1919. Southern Democrats held powerful positions in Congress during the Wilson Administration, with one study noting “Though comprising only about half of the Democratic senators and slightly over two-fifths of the Democratic representatives, the southerners made up a large majority of the party’s senior members in the two houses. They exerted great weight in the two Democratic caucuses and headed almost all of the important congressional committees.”<ref>The South in Modern America A Region at Odds By Dewey W. Grantham, 2001, P.66</ref>

From 1896 to 1912 and 1921 to 1931, the Democrats were relegated to second place status in national politics and didn't control a single branch of the federal government despite universal dominance in most of the "[[Solid South]]." In [[1928 United States presidential election|1928]] several Southern states dallied with voting Republican in supporting [[Herbert Hoover]] over the [[Catholic Church in the United States|Roman Catholic]] [[Al Smith]], but the behavior was short lived as the [[Wall Street Crash 1929|Stock Market Crash of 1929]] returned Republicans to disfavor throughout the South. Nationally, Republicans lost Congress in January 1931 and the White House in March 1933 by huge margins. By this time, too, the Democratic Party leadership began to change its tone somewhat on racial politics. With the [[Great Depression]] gripping the nation, and with the lives of most Americans disrupted, the assisting of African-Americans in American society was seen as necessary by the new government.

===1933–1981===
During the 1930s, as the [[New Deal]] began to move Democrats as a whole to the left in economic policy, Southern Democrats were mostly supportive, although by the late 1930s there was a growing [[conservatism in the United States|conservative faction]]. Both factions supported Roosevelt's foreign policies. By 1948 the protection of segregation led Democrats in the Deep South to reject Truman and run a third party ticket of [[Dixiecrats]] in the [[1948 United States presidential election]]. After 1964, Southern Democrats lost major battles during the [[Civil Rights Movement]]. Federal laws ended segregation and restrictions on black voters.

During the Civil Rights Movement, Democrats in the South initially still voted loyally with their party. After the signing of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]], the old argument that all Whites had to stick together to prevent civil rights legislation lost its force because the legislation had now been passed. More and more Whites began to vote Republican, especially in the suburbs and growing cities. Newcomers from the North were mostly Republican; they were now joined by conservatives and wealthy Southern Whites, while liberal Whites and poor Whites, especially in rural areas, remained with the Democratic Party.<ref>Byron E. Shafer and Richard Johnston, ''The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South'' (2009) pp. 173–74</ref>

The [[New Deal]] program of [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Franklin Delano Roosevelt]] (FDR) generally united the party factions for over three decades, since Southerners, like Northern urban populations, were hit particularly hard and generally benefited from the massive governmental relief program. FDR was adept at holding White Southerners in the coalition<ref>As in declining to invite African-American [[Jesse Owens]], hero of the [[1936 Summer Olympics|1936 Olympics]], to the White House.</ref> while simultaneously beginning the erosion of Black voters away from their then-characteristic Republican preferences. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s catalyzed the end of this Democratic Party coalition of interests by magnetizing Black voters to the Democratic label and simultaneously ending White supremacist control of the Democratic Party apparatus.<ref>Until the 1960s the Democratic Party [[Partisan primary|primaries]] were [[tantamount to election]] in most of the South and, being restricted largely to caucasians, were openly called [[White primary|White primaries]].</ref> A series of court decisions, rendering primary elections as public instead of private events administered by the parties, essentially freed the Southern region to change more toward the two-party behavior of most of the rest of the nation.

In the presidential elections of [[U.S. presidential election, 1952|1952]] and [[U.S. presidential election, 1956|1956]] Republican nominee [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], a popular [[World War II]] [[General (United States)|general]], won several Southern states, thus breaking some White Southerners away from their Democratic Party pattern. The [[Seniority in the United States Senate|senior]] position of Southern Congressmen and Senators, and the discipline of many groups such as the [[Southern Caucus]]<ref>{{cite web | url=https://time.com/archive/6888376/national-affairs-go-west-lyndon/ | title=National Affairs: Go West, Lyndon | date=February 23, 1959 }}</ref> meant that Civil Rights initiatives tended to be blunted despite popular support.

The passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] was a significant event in converting the [[Deep South]] to the Republican Party; in that year most [[U.S. senator|Senatorial]] Republicans supported the Act (most of the opposition came from Southern Democrats). Democratic preference. After the passage of this Act, however, their willingness to support Republicans on a national level increased demonstrably. In 1964, Republican presidential nominee [[Barry Goldwater|Goldwater]], who had voted against the Civil Rights Act,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/goldwater-barry-m|title = Goldwater, Barry M|date = April 26, 2017}}</ref> won many of the "Solid South" states over Democratic presidential nominee [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], himself a [[Texas|Texan]], and with many this Republican support continued and seeped down the ballot to congressional, state, and ultimately local levels. A further significant item of legislation was the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]], which targeted for preclearance by the [[U.S. Department of Justice]] any election-law change in areas where African-American voting participation was lower than the norm (most but not all of these areas were in the South); the effect of the Voting Rights Act on southern elections was profound, including the by-product that some White Southerners perceived it as meddling while Black voters universally appreciated it. Nixon aide Kevin Phillips told ''The New York Times'' in 1970 that "Negrophobe" Whites would quit the Democrats if Republicans enforced the Voting Rights Act and blacks registered as Democrats.<ref>{{Cite web| title=Nixon's Southern strategy 'It's All In the Charts' | website=[[The New York Times]] | url=https://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-southern.pdf | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060616072807/http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-southern.pdf | archive-date=2006-06-16}}</ref> The trend toward acceptance of Republican identification among Southern White voters was bolstered in the next two elections by [[Richard Nixon]].
[[File:JimmyCarterPortrait2.jpg|thumb|upright|39th U.S. President [[Jimmy Carter]], a [[Southern Democrat]] from the state of [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] and the longest-lived president in U.S. history.]]
Denouncing the [[forced busing]] policy that was used to enforce school desegregation,<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Politics of Principle: Richard Nixon|author=Lawrence J McAndrews|journal=The Journal of Negro History|volume=83|pages = 187–200|number=3|date=Summer 1998|doi=10.2307/2649015|jstor=2649015|s2cid=141142915}}</ref> [[Richard Nixon]] courted populist conservative Southern Whites with what is called the [[Southern Strategy]], though his speechwriter [[Jeffrey Hart]] claimed that his campaign rhetoric was actually a "[[Border states (American Civil War)|Border State]] Strategy" and accused the press of being "very lazy" when they called it a "Southern Strategy".<ref>{{cite video | people=[[Jeffrey Hart|Hart, Jeffrey]] | date=February 9, 2006 | title = The Making of the American Conservative Mind | medium=television | location=[[Hanover, New Hampshire]] | publisher=[[C-SPAN]]}}</ref> In the 1971 ''[[Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education]]'' ruling, the power of the federal government to enforce forced busing was strengthened when the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts had the discretion to include busing as a desegregation tool to achieve racial balance. Some southern Democrats became Republicans at the national level, while remaining with their old party in state and local politics throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Several prominent conservative Democrats switched parties to become Republicans, including [[Strom Thurmond]], [[John Connally]] and [[Mills E. Godwin Jr]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Joseph A. Aistrup|title=The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oKMeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA135|year=2015|page=135|publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=9780813147925}}</ref> In the 1974 ''[[Milliken v. Bradley]]'' decision, however, the ability to use forced busing as a political tactic was greatly diminished when the U.S. Supreme Court placed an important limitation on ''Swann'' and ruled that students could only be bused across district lines if evidence of [[de jure segregation]] across multiple school districts existed.

In [[1976 United States presidential election|1976]], former [[Governor of Georgia|Georgia]] governor [[Jimmy Carter]] won every Southern state except Oklahoma and Virginia in his successful presidential campaign as a Democrat, being the last Democratic presidential candidate to win a majority of the states in the South as of 2024. In [[U.S. presidential election, 1980|1980]] Republican presidential nominee [[Ronald Reagan]] won every southern state except for Georgia, although Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee were all decided by less than 3%.

===1981–2008===
In 1980, Republican presidential nominee [[Ronald Reagan]] announced that he supported "states' rights."<ref>{{cite news|last=Greenberg|first=David|title=Dog-Whistling Dixie: When Reagan said "states' rights," he was talking about race.|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2007/11/dogwhistling_dixie.html|newspaper=Slate|date=November 20, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120112144213/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2007/11/dogwhistling_dixie.html|archive-date=January 12, 2012|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Lee Atwater]], who served as Reagan's chief strategist in the Southern states, claimed that by 1968, a vast majority of southern Whites had learned to accept that racial slurs like "[[nigger]]" were offensive and that mentioning "states rights" and reasons for its justification, along with [[fiscal conservatism]] and opposition to social programs understood by many White southerners to disproportionally benefit Black Americans, had now become the best way to appeal to southern White voters.<ref name="Branch">{{cite book|last=Branch|first=Taylor|title=Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–65|publisher=Simon & Schuster|location=New York|year=1999|page=[https://archive.org/details/pillaroffireamer00bran/page/242 242]|isbn=978-0-684-80819-2|oclc=37909869|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/pillaroffireamer00bran/page/242}}</ref> Following Reagan's success at the national level, the Republican Party moved sharply to the [[New Right]], with the shrinkage of the "Eastern Establishment" [[Rockefeller Republican]] element that had emphasized their support for civil rights.<ref>Nicol C. Rae, ''The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans: From 1952 to the Present'' (1989).</ref>

Economic and cultural conservatism (especially regarding [[anti-abortion movement|abortion]] and [[LGBT rights in the United States|LGBT rights]]) became more important in the South, with its large religious right element, such as [[Southern Baptists]] in the [[Bible Belt]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Nicole Mellow|title=The State of Disunion: Regional Sources of Modern American Partisanship|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_jpqImtDBUIC&pg=PT110|year=2008|publisher=Johns Hopkins UP|page=110|isbn=9780801896460}}</ref> The South gradually became fertile ground for the Republican Party. Following the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]], the large Black vote in the South held steady but overwhelmingly favored the Democratic Party. Even as the Democratic party came to increasingly depend on the support of African-American voters in the South, well-established White Democratic incumbents still held sway in most Southern states for decades. Starting in 1964, although the Southern states split their support between parties in most presidential elections, conservative Democrats controlled nearly every Southern state legislature until the mid-1990s. On the eve of the [[Republican Revolution]] in 1994, Democrats still held a 2:1 advantage over the Republicans in southern congressional seats. Only in 2011 did the Republicans capture a majority of Southern state legislatures, and have continued to hold power over Southern politics for the most part since.

Many of the Representatives, Senators, and voters who were referred to as [[Reagan Democrat]]s in the 1980s were conservative Southern Democrats. They often had [[Conservative Democrat|more conservative views]] than other Democrats.<ref name="Why">See [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/08/why-did-the-south-turn-republican/45956/ Matthew Yglesias, "Why did the South turn Republican?"], ''The Atlantic'' August 24, 2007.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-democrats-have-shifted-left-over-the-last-30-years/|title=Why The Democrats Have Shifted Left Over The Last 30 Years|website=[[FiveThirtyEight]]|last=Sach|first=Maddie|date=December 16, 2019}}</ref> But there were notable remnants of the [[Solid South]] into the early 21st century.

* One example was Arkansas, whose state legislature continued to be majority Democrat (having, however, given its electoral votes to the Republicans in the past three presidential elections, except in [[1992 United States presidential election|1992]] and [[1996 United States presidential election|1996]] when "favorite son" [[Bill Clinton]] was the candidate and won each time) until 2012, when Arkansas voters selected a 21–14 Republican majority in the [[Arkansas Senate]].
* Another example was [[North Carolina]]. Although the state has voted for Republicans in every presidential election since 1980 except for [[2008 United States presidential election in North Carolina|2008]], the State legislature was in Democratic control until 2010. The North Carolina congressional delegation was heavily Democratic until January 2013 when the Republicans could, after the [[2010 United States census]], adopt a redistricting plan of their choosing.

In [[1992 United States presidential election|1992]], Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was elected president. Unlike Carter, however, Clinton was only able to win the southern states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. While running for president, Clinton promised to "end welfare as we have come to know it" while in office.<ref name="promise">{{cite news |first=Barbara| last=Vobejda| title= Clinton Signs Welfare Bill Amid Division |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/welfare/stories/wf082396.htm |newspaper=[[Washington Post]] |date=August 22, 1996 |access-date=November 21, 2013 }}</ref> In 1996, Clinton would fulfill his campaign promise and the longtime Republican goal of major [[welfare reform]] came into fruition. After two welfare reform bills sponsored by the Republican-controlled Congress were successfully vetoed by the President,<ref name=salonafr>[http://www.salon.com/2002/02/21/clinton_88/ Why blacks love Bill Clinton ] – interview with DeWayne Wickham, [[Salon.com]], Suzy Hansen, published February 22, 2002, accessed October 21, 2013.</ref> a compromise was eventually reached and the [[Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act]] was signed into law on August 22, 1996.<ref name="promise" />

During the [[Clinton administration]], the southern strategy shifted towards the so-called "[[culture war]]," which saw major political battles between the [[Christian right|Religious Right]] and the secular Left. Chapman notes a split vote among many conservative Southern Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s who supported local and statewide conservative Democrats while simultaneously voting for Republican presidential candidates.<ref>Roger Chapman, ''Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia'' (2010) vol 1, p. 136</ref> This tendency of many Southern Whites to vote for the Republican presidential candidate but Democrats from other offices lasted until the 2010 midterm elections. In the [[2008 United States House of Representatives elections|November 2008 elections]], Democrats won 3 out of 4 U.S. House seats from Mississippi, 3 out of 4 in Arkansas, 5 out of 9 in Tennessee, and achieved near parity in the Georgia and Alabama delegations.

Republicans first dominated presidential elections in the South, then won a majority of Southern gubernatorial and congressional elections after the 1994 [[Republican Revolution]], and finally came to control a majority of Southern [[state legislature (United States)|state legislatures]] by the 2010s.<ref name="The long goodbye"/>

===2009–present===
In 2009, Southern Democrats controlled both branches of the [[Alabama General Assembly]], the [[Arkansas General Assembly]], the [[Delaware General Assembly]], the [[Louisiana State Legislature]], the [[Maryland General Assembly]], the [[Mississippi Legislature]], the [[North Carolina General Assembly]], and the [[West Virginia Legislature]], along with the [[Council of the District of Columbia]], the [[Kentucky House of Representatives]], and the [[Virginia Senate]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ncsl.org/documents/statevote/legiscontrol_2009.pdf |title=2009 State and Legislative Partisan Composition |date=January 26, 2009 |work=www.ncsl.org |publisher=National Conference of State Legislatures |access-date=February 14, 2021 |archive-date=May 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220522210246/https://www.ncsl.org/documents/statevote/legiscontrol_2009.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> Democrats lost control of the North Carolina and Alabama legislatures in 2010, the Louisiana and Mississippi legislatures in 2011 and the Arkansas legislature in 2012. Additionally, in 2014, Democrats lost four U.S. Senate seats in the South (in West Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Louisiana) that they had previously held. By 2017, Southern Democrats only controlled both branches of the Delaware General Assembly and the Maryland General Assembly, along with the Council of the District of Columbia; they had lost control of both houses of the state legislatures in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and West Virginia.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Documents/Elections/Legis_Control_2017_August_4th_10am_26973.pdf |title=2017 State & Legislative Partisan Composition |date=August 4, 2017 |work=www.ncsl.org |publisher=National Conference of State Legislatures |access-date=February 14, 2021 |archive-date=January 2, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220102230318/https://www.ncsl.org/Portals/1/Documents/Elections/Legis_Control_2017_August_4th_10am_26973.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Nearly all White Democratic representatives in the South lost reelection in the [[2010 United States House of Representatives elections|2010 midterm elections]]. That year, Democrats won only one U.S. House seat each in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Arkansas, and two out of nine House seats in Tennessee, and they lost their one Arkansas seat in 2012. Following the November 2010 elections, [[John Barrow (U.S. politician)|John Barrow]] of Georgia was left as the only [[White Americans|White]] Democratic U.S. House member in the Deep South, and he lost reelection in 2014. There would no more White Democrats from the Deep South until [[Joe Cunningham (American politician)|Joe Cunningham]] was elected from a [[South Carolina's 1st congressional district|South Carolina U.S. House district]] in 2018, and he lost re-election in 2020.

However, even since January 2015, Democrats have not been completely shut out of power in the South. Democrat [[John Bel Edwards]] was elected governor of Louisiana in [[2015 Louisiana gubernatorial election|2015]] and won re-election in [[2019 Louisiana gubernatorial election|2019]], running as an anti-abortion, pro-gun [[conservative Democrat]]. In a [[2017 United States Senate special election in Alabama|2017 special election]], moderate Democrat [[Doug Jones (politician)|Doug Jones]] was elected a U.S. Senator from Alabama, though he lost re-election in [[2020 United States Senate election in Alabama|2020]]. Democrat [[Roy Cooper]] was elected governor of North Carolina in [[2016 North Carolina gubernatorial election|2016]], won re-election in [[2020 North Carolina gubernatorial election|2020]], and Democrat [[Josh Stein]] won in [[2024 North Carolina gubernatorial election|2024]]. [[Andy Beshear]] was elected governor of Kentucky in [[2019 Kentucky gubernatorial election|2019]] and won re-election in [[2023 Kentucky gubernatorial election|2023]]. As of February 2025, Democrats control the governorships of Kentucky, North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware and the state legislatures of Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. [[Joe Manchin]] would be the last Democrat to win statewide in West Virginia in 2018, later switching to Independent status, before declining to run for re-election in 2024.

Since 2017, most U.S. House or state legislative seats held by Democrats in the South are [[majority-minority]] or urban districts. Due to growing urbanization and changing demographics in many Southern states, more liberal Democrats have found success in the South. In the 2018 elections, Democrats nearly succeeded in taking governor's seats in Georgia and Florida and gained 12 national House seats in the South;<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kilgore |first1=Ed |title=A Different Kind of Democratic Party Is Rising in the South |date=November 9, 2018 |url=https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/changing-southern-democratic-party.html |publisher=New York Magazine |access-date=November 9, 2018}}</ref> the trend continued in the 2019 elections, where Democrats took both houses of the [[Virginia General Assembly]], and in 2020 where Joe Biden narrowly won Georgia with Republicans winning down ballot, along with [[Raphael Warnock]] and [[Jon Ossoff]] narrowly winning both U.S. Senate seats in that state just two months later. However, Democrats would lose the governor races in Florida and Georgia in 2022 by wider margins than in 2018, though Senator Warnock won [[2022 United States Senate election in Georgia|re-election]] in Georgia.

Virginia is a notable exception to Republican dominance in the former [[Confederate States of America|11 Confederate states]], due to [[Northern Virginia]] being part of the [[Washington metropolitan area]], with both major parties continuing to be competitive in the State in the 21st century. Dr. [[Ralph Northam]], a Democrat and the [[governor of Virginia]] (2018–22), admitted that he voted for [[George W. Bush]] in the [[2000 United States presidential election|2000]] and [[2004 United States presidential election|2004]] presidential elections.<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democratic-candidate-for-virginia-governor-says-he-voted-for-george-w-bush-twice_n_58b48eb9e4b0780bac2c68d5 | title=Democratic Candidate For Virginia Governor Says He Voted For George W. Bush. Twice. |first=Ryan | last=Grim | work=[[HuffPost]] | date=February 28, 2017}}</ref> Despite this admission, Northam, a former state Senator who has served as [[Lieutenant Governor of Virginia]] from 2014 to 2018, easily defeated the more progressive and cosmopolitan candidate, former Representative [[Tom Perriello]], by 55.9 percent to 44.1 percent to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2017.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/northam-defeats-perriello-for-democratic-nomination-for-governor-gillespie-edges/article_9bde85a8-a5eb-5e7b-8e99-44540b1f985b.html|title=Northam defeats Perriello for Democratic nomination for governor; Gillespie edges Stewart in GOP contest|first=GRAHAM MOOMAW AND PATRICK WILSON Richmond|last=Times-Dispatch|date=June 14, 2017 }}</ref> Both of Virginia's U.S. Senators are Democrats, while the incumbent governor [[Glenn Youngkin]] is a Republican.

As of the 2020s, Southern Democrats who consistently vote for the Democratic ticket are mostly urban liberals or African Americans, while most [[White Southerners]] of both genders tend to vote for the Republican ticket, although there are sizable numbers of [[swing voters]] who sometimes [[Split-ticket voting|split their tickets]] or cross party lines.<ref name="Junn-2020"/>