If the ex-Confederate states couldn't vote...

[wdewey]

The presidential candidate that would win if you discount the votes of the ex-Confederate states. (I'm not claiming that this works as "alternate history" or anything, just considering each election independently)
64 Johnson
68 Nixon
72 Nixon
76 Ford
80 Reagan
84 Reagan
88 Bush
92 Clinton
96 Clinton
00 Gore
04 Kerry
08 Obama

Notice a pattern here? I often heard it said that W. won on the same "cultural politics" strategy used by Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Jr. At least before Obama won, we were said to be in a long period of Republican dominance in which Carter and Clinton were aberrations. But when you look at things this way, you can see that the "Union" states had already realigned  to the Democrats by 1992.

(anyone care to do the results before '64? I think you get a bunch of Republican victories from the Civil War on, except for FDR--I don't know about JFK and Truman)

[wdewey]

All very true, I guess it's not so much counterfactual as a way to break the country into regions. Everyone likes to analyze the South in politics, so why not analyze the "North"? I got the idea from taking a class on Southern Politics. (One of the textbooks had a brief analysis of the GOP takeover in Congress in 1994, showing how the GOP make lasting gains by breaking the Democratic stranglehold on the southern delegation in the House, while only controlling the non-Southern delegation for a single election cycle)

[wdewey]

Hmm, not as interesting as I thought. since 1900, the only different results are 1916 (Wilson was kind of a fluke anyway), 1976 (did I that one right?), 2000, and 2004. (and yes, WV doesn't count, following Black and Black's books on southern politics).

 I still think this is good evidence for seeing 1992 as a realigning year, if you buy into realignment theory. Gore and Kerry were accused of being losers like McGovern, Dukakis, Carter, and Mondale. But there's a huge difference between competitive losses in 2000 and 2004, and four out of five elections being blowouts from 1972 to 1988. In all the handwringing over the Democrats' "southern problem", everyone lost sight of the fact the Democrats had consolidated strongholds elsewhere in the country.