dany612 said:
Why do urban areas vote (majority) Democrat compared to rural areas?
Why is it that red states are more likely to provide the most food stamps and have higher poverty than blue ones? I thought Republicans wanted "limited government" by taking away resources like food stamps etc so people can help themselves yet red states are more likely to have a higher percentage?
What happened during the transition of parties? Most southern states/ex slave states were Democrats but now they are Republican? Some argue that the transition took place around the civil rights movement...can someone elaborate?
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It was before the Civil Rights movement really.
Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats were two different beasts before even WW2 that stayed together largely because the Republicans were a bit more progressive with race then the Northern Democrats.
The first big crack came when Truman took over for FDR and created a panel for civil rights. The Southern Democrats created their own party the "Dixiecrats" in an attempt to make the race a three way standoff to go to the house of representatives, and then dealing with whichever side promised to leave Civil Rights behind.
They lost however and were forced back within the Democratic party.
Later LBJ signed the Civil Rights act... which pushed the split further... they remained Democrats mostly however, and the National Elections pretty much were evenly split until Nixon decided to court the South with his "Southern Strategy".
This was essentially racism about african americans to get white votes. For a contemporary version, look at Nicholoas Sarkozy's current campaign about Halal meat and the like, though that strategy might disapear now thanks to the racist Neo Nazi attacks in france.
The problem with this was, it ended up costing the Republicans the Black vote... which they had the majority of still at the time.
Wasn't the most foward thinking strategy.
However, a lot of people would argue it actually had more to do with economics then anything else, since working class whites still tended to vote Democrat until the 1990s, the Republicans mostly getting the middle class vote.
