Also posted at my blog and Daily Kos. Check out the tabulated PVIs here.
Most of Alabama’s counties were much more Democratic than the national average in the “Solid South” years. Central Alabama around Birmingham was less Democratic than most of the state in these years because of some Appalachian and anti-secession attitudes, from “the Republic of” Winston County to Chilton County. The Republican trend spread to Jefferson County (Birmingham) itself as well as outside of Central Alabama to Dallas County (Selma), Montgomery (Montgomery), the Gulf counties Mobile (Mobile) and Baldwin, and a little in Houston County (Dothan) in the late 1950s, due to the option of “unpledged electors” on the ballot.
The option “unpledged” appeared on the ballot again in 1960, and the Republican trend continued in the aforementioned counties, turning Dallas, Montgomery, and Jefferson more Republican as per PVI. As you can see, in the counties that were already trending Republican, the bottom fell out of Democratic numbers in 1964 as most of the counties flipped to R+ PVIs. The presence of the Tennessee Valley Authority in North Alabama kept most counties in that region in the D+ PVI range. The only blue county outside North Central Alabama next to Montgomery in the 1964 map is heavily black and college county Tuskegee. Also-heavily black Macon County (just south of Tuskegee) and Greene (west of Tuscaloosa) joined Tuskegee in 1968. Washington County, along with Mobile to the south, also trended slightly Democratic.
During the Nixon years, the racial divisions in Alabama began to become more apparent, with much of Central Alabama becoming very Republican, and North Alabama and the Florida counties beginning to trend that way. Jimmy Carter temporarily stopped the bleeding, but the Ronald Reagan revolution would put an end to that for decades to come. The Reagan revolution brought a rapid Republican trend in most counties in Alabama, resulting in many R+ counties in 1988 as the national margin went slightly less for George H.W. Bush than for Reagan.
In spite of two fellow Southerners on the ticket in the 1990s, the Republican trend in Alabama continued, and the realignment of the counties, stalled in the Carter and early Bill Clinton years, picked up. North Alabama was the last holdout outside the Black Belt through 2000 probably because of the connection some voters there felt to the TVA and to Al Gore, who came from demographically similar Middle Tennessee.
The 2004 and 2008 elections saw the realignment pretty much consolidate, with the only Democratic counties for both elections in the Black Belt. Significant Democratic minorities can be found in the urban counties of Mobile, Birmingham, and around the Black Belt. Some counties in North Alabama are catching up to most of the rest of the state, as memories of the Tennessee Valley Authority diminish with each passing day. Looking ahead to 2012, if current trends continue, it won’t be a pretty picture for Democrats. While they may be able to improve on some whites in the cities and college towns, the rest of the counties look likely to stay solidly in the Republican column for a long time.
This sort of thing is like catnip to people like me. Are you gonna do this for every state?
Just how racially polarized the Deep South has become. Obama only got 10% of the white vote in Alabama, 11% in Mississippi, and 14% in Louisiana. Even in Oklahoma, his worst state overall where he lost every single county, Obama still got 29% of the white vote.
Succeeded from Alabama in 1860 to protest Alabama’s succession from the Union, voted solidly Republican ever since. These sort of local political quirks are going the way of the dodo, I’m afraid. If you asked people in Winston County why they vote Republican today, I bet almost no one would mention the Civil War, although maybe that was true in 1948 as well.