by Christopher Cooper
In recent decades the United States South has emerged as the most
rock-ribbed Republican region in the country, but the 2020 election
brought signs that the Republican stranglehold might be loosening. In
those elections, Joe Biden won two southern states: Georgia and
Virginia. In addition, voters in Georgia sent Democrats to the US
Senate, and Democrat Roy Cooper was re-elected as governor of North
Carolina. With the 2024 elections now behind us, what do the results
tell us about the Democratic Party’s appeal in the US South?
Gibbs Knotts and I addressed this question in the London School of Economics United States Politics and Policy blog and we thought some of the readers of Old North State Politics might be interested. Please check it out.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2025/01/29/the-2024-elections-how-the-democrats-hopes-were-dashed-in-the-us-south/
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Dr. Christopher Cooper is Madison Distinguished Professor and Director
of the Haire Institute for Public Policy at Western Carolina University.
His book, Anatomy of a Purple State, was recently published by the University of North Carolina Press. H. Gibbs Knotts is Provost and Professor of Political Science at Coastal Carolina University. His most recent book (co-authored with Jordan Ragusa) is First in the South: Why South Carolina's Presidential Primary Maters.