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Undid revision 1237717272 by RIII98 (talk) this source doesn't list Kentucky as a southern state |
Undid revision 1237806285 by Jon698 (talk), see Culture of Kentucky for citations re: "southern" status |
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Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "[[Nigger]], nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like [[forced busing]], states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."}}
From the [[1980 United States presidential election|1980]] to [[1988 United States presidential election|1988 presidential elections]] Georgia was the only southern state to support a Democratic presidential candidate.{{sfn|Moreland|Steed|Baker|1991|p=23}} Republicans won U.S. Senate seats in Mississippi and Alabama for the first time since Reconstruction in 1978 and 1980, and a statewide office in Georgia in 1980.{{sfn|Moreland|Steed|Baker|1991|p=37}}{{sfn|Moreland|Steed|Baker|1991|p=58}}{{sfn|Moreland|Steed|Baker|1991|p=96}} [[Mack Mattingly]]'s victory in the [[1980 United States Senate election in Georgia|1980 Georgia senatorial election]] made him the first Republican to defeat an incumbent Democratic senator in the deep south.{{sfn|Black|Black|2002|p=124}} Georgia, Kentucky, and Mississippi were the only southern states to not elect a Republican governor in the 1980s.{{sfn|Moreland|Steed|Baker|1991|p=24}} The number of registered Republican voters increased in the south during the 1980s with Louisiana rising from 7% in 1980 to 16% in 1988, North Carolina rising from 24% to 30%, and Florida rising from 30% to 39%.{{sfn|Moreland|Steed|Baker|1991|p=29}}
During the Reagan administration, there was a decline in Republican congressional support in the south. Republicans held 10 of the 22 U.S. Senate seats and 39 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from the south after the 1980 election, but declined to 7 senate seats while maintaining its representation in the U.S. House of Representatives despite reapportionment increasing the south's seat total by eight. Republicans did not contest one-fourth of the house seats in the south in the [[1988 United States House of Representatives elections|1988 election]].{{sfn|Moreland|Steed|Baker|1991|p=23-24}} Reagan was able to form a governing majority due to a coalition between Republicans and conservative southern Democrats, [[Boll weevil (politics)|boll weevils]].{{sfn|Moreland|Steed|Baker|1991|p=21}} The Republicans gained four seats in the U.S. Senate from the south in the 1980 election, but three lost reelection in 1986, and one died in office.{{sfn|Black|Black|2002|p=87}}
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