Why did Georgia Democrats remain in power longer than in other Southern States

[OSR stands with Israel]

Georgia Democrats pretty much had the trifecta in GA until 2002 and held both senate senates in the first two years of the Bush Jr admin too. In other southern states, Dems had already lost power in state wide races by the mid-late 90s but in Georgia they remained dominant until 2002.

I dont get why though, GA is more suburban than most southern states and GA Republicans all the way back in 1980 were able to defeat someone as entrenched in GA politics like Talmadge but it seems like they werent able to really build on that success .

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

To win in a Southern state around that era, Democrats needed two things:

1-A solid reliable core of Democratic votes in a large urban center that weren't nullified by suburban Republicans.
2-Still strong support from Dixiecrats in rural areas.

Georgia had both. South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi lacked #1, (Birmingham doesn't go anywhere near as far as Atlanta does, especially because back then basically all its suburbs were Republican and Jefferson County was a swing county), Texas and Tennessee lacked the second half of #1.

Georgia wasn't really that unusual though, Democrats still held up well in Louisiana (which also had both), North Carolina was still a swing state, albeit in a different way than its a swing state today, and Democrats still controlled the state legislatures of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee up until 2010, later than Georgia in fact.

[Roll Roons]

To win in a Southern state around that era, Democrats needed two things:

1-A solid reliable core of Democratic votes in a large urban center that weren't nullified by suburban Republicans.
2-Still strong support from Dixiecrats in rural areas.

Georgia had both. South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi lacked #1, (Birmingham doesn't go anywhere near as far as Atlanta does, especially because back then basically all its suburbs were Republican and Jefferson County was a swing county), Texas and Tennessee lacked the second half of #1.

Georgia wasn't really that unusual though, Democrats still held up well in Louisiana (which also had both), North Carolina was still a swing state, albeit in a different way than its a swing state today, and Democrats still controlled the state legislatures of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee up until 2010, later than Georgia in fact.

I don't even think they even necessarily needed a major city. Little Rock isn't that big, but Democrats were able to stay strong with a Dixiecrat coalition in Arkansas (the last Southern state to fully flip) until 2014.

[OSR stands with Israel]

To win in a Southern state around that era, Democrats needed two things:

1-A solid reliable core of Democratic votes in a large urban center that weren't nullified by suburban Republicans.
2-Still strong support from Dixiecrats in rural areas.

Georgia had both. South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi lacked #1, (Birmingham doesn't go anywhere near as far as Atlanta does, especially because back then basically all its suburbs were Republican and Jefferson County was a swing county), Texas and Tennessee lacked the second half of #1.

Georgia wasn't really that unusual though, Democrats still held up well in Louisiana (which also had both), North Carolina was still a swing state, albeit in a different way than its a swing state today, and Democrats still controlled the state legislatures of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee up until 2010, later than Georgia in fact.

I don't even think they even necessarily needed a major city. Little Rock isn't that big, but Democrats were able to stay strong with a Dixiecrat coalition in Arkansas (the last Southern state to fully flip) until 2014.

True overall AR Dems stayed in power longer but GOP still won more statewide offices than they did in GA . 2002-2010 though somehow was a disastrous period for the AR GOP

[Frodo]

Let's not forget West Virginia and Kentucky where Democrats held on to at least one house of the legislature in those states until just a few years ago.  

[OSR stands with Israel]

Let's not forget West Virginia and Kentucky where Democrats held on to at least one house of the legislature in those states until just a few years ago.  

They were never really part of the the Solid South though given that WV was a Republican state from 1864-1928

[TDAS04]

Jimmy Carter's existence may have lengthened Democrats' strength in GA, as Clinton did for AR Dems.

[QAnonKelly]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

[pbrower2a]

Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton could nullify the tribalistic tendencies of white southerners.  But once they were off the scene, "race" became a means of dividing people again. 

 

[OSR stands with Israel]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

[QAnonKelly]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

Yeah I didn’t say they were great, none of my grandparents ever went to desegregated schools. I just said they weren’t as bad. There was an era around of the turn of the century where it erupted into violence but post WW2, the Atlanta area didn’t have the unrest that the surrounding states had. It was still really segregated but it never quite hit the tipping point the way it did in say Alabama or Mississippi. I wrote a whole paper on this in college.

[OSR stands with Israel]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

Yeah I didn’t say they were great, none of my grandparents ever went to desegregated schools. I just said they weren’t as bad. There was an era around of the turn of the century where it erupted into violence but post WW2, the Atlanta area didn’t have the unrest that the surrounding states had. It was still really segregated but it never quite hit the tipping point the way it did in say Alabama or Mississippi. I wrote a whole paper on this in college.

Sure but it still had worse race problems than states like Texas, Florida, and much of the upper South and those states flipped before Georgia did as well.


It seems like Georgia Democrats in statewide races were able to do really good job in rural areas even after they collapsed elsewhere in those places in the south and this was despite the fact that Suburban Counties such as Gwinnett and Cobb were Titanium Republican even in the 90s (it wasnt just from 2002-2014 where that was the case)

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

Atlanta was the capital of the New South and was 'too busy' to hate.

[Orser67]

Let's not forget West Virginia and Kentucky where Democrats held on to at least one house of the legislature in those states until just a few years ago.  

Yeah, personally I'm more impressed with how long Democrats held on in WV, KY, AR, and LA (each of which had at least one Democratic governor or senator even after the 2010 wave).

[Tekken_Guy]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

Alabama literally had George Wallace.

[RINO Tom]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

Alabama literally had George Wallace.

You responded with a simplistic anecdote (shocker) to what was clearly a more nuanced and deeper point.

[OSR stands with Israel]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

Alabama literally had George Wallace.

and Georgia had Herman Talmadge who was worse than Wallace, Sparkman , Hill or Allan and Massox was arguably just as bad as Wallace

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

What BRTD said, plus the GA House had its own Mike Madigan in Speaker Tom Murphy.  He helped spur a lot of economic development in Georgia and was just an all-around popular public figure.

He also tried to gerrymander Newt Gingrich out of his House seat though and eventually all of the gerrymandering backfired on him when he lost reelection despite having been in the statehouse for forty years.

[Indy Texas]

To win in a Southern state around that era, Democrats needed two things:

1-A solid reliable core of Democratic votes in a large urban center that weren't nullified by suburban Republicans.
2-Still strong support from Dixiecrats in rural areas.

3. Georgia also has something other Southern states don't, which is a fairly large black upper-middle/professional class in Atlanta that is able to be more politically engaged.

That may also tie back to the fact that the relationship between the Georgia Democratic Party and the business community was cordial and thus Republicans may have found it harder to tap into them as a source of campaign contributions.

4. Georgia's Republican Party often ran fairly moderate (for the GOP) candidates for statewide office. When you combine that with the relatively conservative bent of the Democratic candidates for statewide office, this may have unintentionally delayed the migration of conservative whites into the GOP for downballot races. The GOP candidates also often tried to woo Atlanta-area black voters to their side, which may have hurt them with whites more than it helped them with blacks.

[Fuzzy Bear]

GA (especially Atlanta) has never quite had as bad race relations as the other Southern states.

This is false


First of all : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election_in_Georgia

GA also had one of the strictest Jim Crow laws out their and Talmadge was worse than anybody in MS or AL.


Also the Atlanta suburbs were very Republican in the 1990s, it was the fact that Dems still did very well in rural GA in statewide races that saved them while in other states Dems had already collapsed in Rural areas in statewide election by the mid 90s.

Alabama literally had George Wallace.

and Georgia had Herman Talmadge who was worse than Wallace, Sparkman , Hill or Allan and Massox was arguably just as bad as Wallace

Lester Maddox integrated state government, appointing blacks to a record number of positions.  Lester Maddox integrated the GA State Patrol.  And he didn't do it because he wanted to run for President someday as a Democrat.  (Maddox opposed every Democratic nominee for President from 1968 onward, and it was likely that he didn't support them previously.)  His RECORD was far better than his RHETORIC during the campaign.  (Indeed, while in office, Maddox earnestly insisted that black Georgians be address as Mr., Mrs., Sir, Ma'am, etc., just like anyone else.) 

Georgia had worse Governors.  Gene Talmadge was worse, but Herman Talmadge was nowhere near as bad as some.  S. Marvin Griffin was likely Georgia's worst Governor in the postwar era (he was Wallace's VP stand-in until Wallace chose Curtis LeMay).  But Georgia also had liberal Ellis Arnall and moderate Carl Sanders, and the somewhat moderate Ed Rivers from WWII onward. 

Harry Byrd of Virginia shut down all of Virginia's public schools for a year to fight integration.  Thurmond and Wallace were the face of the Dixiecrats.  Eastland was the fiercest racist in the Senate after Theodore Bilbo (who, btw, was a down-the-line New Dealer) died.  Georgia was never Mississippi, which was the worst Southern state for racism, and it never turned out the sort of segregationist titans as did Alabama and South Carolina.

[Skill and Chance]

It is surprising given the relative size of Atlanta.  The recipe prior to 2010 and especially prior to 2002 was super rural = Dems hold on longest, which makes me think we have to go further back to answer this question.  The real anomaly that needs to be explained is why didn't Reagan and Nixon have any downballot coattails in these areas in the 1972/84 landslides?  They really stick out for how little congress/state legislatures shifted.  The earlier 55-60% of the NPV blowouts on both sides in the 1920's and 30's did have coattails in much of the country. 

[QAnonKelly]

To win in a Southern state around that era, Democrats needed two things:

1-A solid reliable core of Democratic votes in a large urban center that weren't nullified by suburban Republicans.
2-Still strong support from Dixiecrats in rural areas.

3. Georgia also has something other Southern states don't, which is a fairly large black upper-middle/professional class in Atlanta that is able to be more politically engaged.

That may also tie back to the fact that the relationship between the Georgia Democratic Party and the business community was cordial and thus Republicans may have found it harder to tap into them as a source of campaign contributions.

4. Georgia's Republican Party often ran fairly moderate (for the GOP) candidates for statewide office. When you combine that with the relatively conservative bent of the Democratic candidates for statewide office, this may have unintentionally delayed the migration of conservative whites into the GOP for downballot races. The GOP candidates also often tried to woo Atlanta-area black voters to their side, which may have hurt them with whites more than it helped them with blacks.

I think a lot of this has to do with the good universities in the ATL area, both public and HBCs.  Spellman and Morehouse are both really good schools that produce a lot of academics. As for the public ones, Georgia State (of which I'm a third generation alum) is one of the biggest drivers of social upward mobility in the country. It graduates more black students than any other school in the country.  My grandfather was there in the early 60s before they intergrated. I think Tech graduates more black engineers of any public school and 2nd to Howard. There's just been nowhere else in the country over the past half century that produces an affluent black middle class at this level.

[Del Tachi]

I reject your premise that GA was substantially more suburban than other Southern states during the 1990s/2000s.  GA is less urban than many Southern states where Democrats did lose significant ground in 1990s (i.e. TX, VA, FL, etc.).  Georgia stayed Democrat longer because it was more rural than these states.

Georgia was 63.2% urban in 1990, 71.6% in 2000.  For comparison:

Florida was 84.8% urban in 1990, 89.3% in 2000.
Louisiana was 68.1% urban in 1990, 72.6% in 2000.
Virginia was 69.4% urban in 1990, 73.0% in 2000.
Texas was 80.3% urban in 1990, 82.5% in 2000.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I reject your premise that GA was substantially more suburban than other Southern states during the 1990s/2000s.  GA is less urban than many Southern states where Democrats did lose significant ground in 1990s (i.e. TX, VA, FL, etc.).  Georgia stayed Democrat longer because it was more rural than these states.

Georgia was 63.2% urban in 1990, 71.6% in 2000.  For comparison:

Florida was 84.8% urban in 1990, 89.3% in 2000.
Louisiana was 68.1% urban in 1990, 72.6% in 2000.
Virginia was 69.4% urban in 1990, 73.0% in 2000.
Texas was 80.3% urban in 1990, 82.5% in 2000.

What about Alabama though were Democrats started to get whooped in state wide elections beginning in 1994

[Del Tachi]

I reject your premise that GA was substantially more suburban than other Southern states during the 1990s/2000s.  GA is less urban than many Southern states where Democrats did lose significant ground in 1990s (i.e. TX, VA, FL, etc.).  Georgia stayed Democrat longer because it was more rural than these states.

Georgia was 63.2% urban in 1990, 71.6% in 2000.  For comparison:

Florida was 84.8% urban in 1990, 89.3% in 2000.
Louisiana was 68.1% urban in 1990, 72.6% in 2000.
Virginia was 69.4% urban in 1990, 73.0% in 2000.
Texas was 80.3% urban in 1990, 82.5% in 2000.

What about Alabama though were Democrats started to get whooped in state wide elections beginning in 1994

Alabama's numbers are weird because it goes from 60.4% urban in 1990, to 55.4% urban in 2000 (I'm attributing this mainly to White flight from JeffCo to exurban Shelby/Tuscaloosa/Walker Counties during the 1990s).  Comparing the 1990 numbers, AL and GA are actually pretty close (60.4% and 63.2% respectively).

OSR, I would encourage you not get too bogged-down in the weeds here.  Talking about the relative urbanities of Southern states during the 1990s is probably too much of an over-analysis, even.

We're dealing with extremely small samples here.  2-3 election cycles in 8-9 states.  The effects of incumbency, candidate quality, and other locally-idiosyncratic factors are way too pronounced in such a small sample to identify any kind of underlying trend.