Dominant and Recessive Coalitions, or a Reason for Optimism

When was the last time a Democratic Presidential candidate received a majority of the popular vote? And when was the last time a Democratic Presidential candidate carried the South? The answer to both questions is Carter in 1976. That sounds like a simple enough syllogism, and I think a lot of pundits complete it by concluding that the Democrats need to start winning the South again. But the way I see it, this is a misreading of the electoral history: the South is not the key to electoral victory. Carter’s election was a fluke. The man we should be paying attention to is LBJ.

First, Carter was running against the shattered remnants of the most disgraced administration in US history. Second, Carter’s coalition was unique: he carried the South for the first and last time since 1960, but he failed to win a majority in any state in the industrial Midwest, and he won no state West of Texas. Finally, Carter’s "majority" was negligible anyhow: a bare 50.08% of the popular vote. In fact, if Carter hadn’t eked out a 52%-48% victory in New York, he wouldn’t have won at all.

The last genuine Democratic majority was LBJ’s 1964 landslide victory over Goldwater. LBJ won 61% of the popular vote even though he lost the South to the Republicans for the first time since the Reconstruction! Some may dismiss it as just a sympathy vote for Kennedy, but I believe the margin was just too large: even if you only were to count those states that voted for LBJ by more than 62%, he still would have won.

Despite this, many pundits still see Clinton's two terms as confirmation that the Southern strategy is critical for the Democrats. But Clinton would have won both times even had he lost the South entirely. Since World War I, two coalitions have emerged: (1) the "dominant" Progressive coalition of the Pacific Coast, the Industrial Midwest, and the Liberal Northeast, and (2) the "recessive" Conservative coalition of the South and the West. Clinton's coalition was the same dominant coalition that has prevailed for nearly a century.

Since 1920, the dominant coalition has won—and would have won with or without the South—16 times. The recessive coalition has only won 4 times: 1960 (Kennedy), 1976 (Carter), and 2000-2004 (George W. Bush). Not coincidentally the "recessive" wins were also 4 of the 5 closest elections in the same time period. (There were also two oddball elections, 1948 and 1968, with strong regional independent candidates and an effective split of both coalitions.)

Thanks to George W. Bush, the Republicans are now stapled to the South, and will continue to have to hold together every state in the recessive coalition to win. Karl Rove discovered that the glue that could hold the recessive coalition together was Christian fundamentalism. But they still needed a couple of inroads into the Progressive states in order to win, and that kind of glue will not hold forever. The Democrats, by securing the dominant coalition for themselves, should be on the side of history.