Editing Southern Democrats (section)

===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"/>