The Lost History of Southern Republicans, Part II

Posted on by Jeff Jenkins
Leaders of the Arkansas Republican Party, 1916 Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville

As I wrote on Friday, by the 1890s, the Republican Party in the South was mostly viewed as a set of rotten boroughs. In each state – outside of a few areas in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia – a Republican organization existed not to compete in elections, but to control delegations at the Republican … Continue reading The Lost History of Southern Republicans, Part II

The Lost History of Southern Republicans, Part I

Posted on by Jeff Jenkins

The electoral foundation of the modern Republican Party is the U.S. South. In 2016, for example, Donald Trump won 304 electoral votes, with 155 coming from the eleven states of the former Confederacy. Overall, Trump won 10 of 11 Southern states – losing only Virginia. And as the figure below illustrates, the Republican candidate for … Continue reading The Lost History of Southern Republicans, Part I