But split-ticketing voting is rapidly can declining. 6% of romney voted for the opposite house. party labels used to mean very different things to very different people. today they speak to deep geographic cultural and ethnic divides in our society. more than ever, we re becoming a nation of straight-ticket voters. especially when it comes to federal office. in a blue state like massachusetts, that makes it a lot harder for republican like gomez to break through or for a democrat like ed markey to blow an election. in fact, massachusetts is the most dramatic illustration of the trend toward straight-ticket voting. the state has nine congressional districts and ten for the two decades before the most recent round of redistricting. not a single one of those districts has elected a republican to the house since 1994. there have been 91 individual house elections in massachusetts in that time, and 91 of them have been won by democrats. last fall republicans were sure they were going to end
Leading to some division among democrats about how far to go to amend the bill to attract even more votes from the gop. democrat chuck schumer has repeatedly said he hopes to get 70 votes in the senate for passage in the house but that would require a significant number of republican votes and, therefore, significant changes to the legislation. i ve heard some who say we should not change consider any further changes to the bill. dare the other side to volt against it. i reject that approach. schumer s approach contrasts sharply by the strategy preferred by many leading democrats who think clearing the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster is the best way forward. on tuesday illinois senator dick durbin told politico i want to get as many volts as we can but not at the expense of the basic agreement. when some of my friends announce 70 votes they create an incentive for republicans to dream up things they neeither
It was a turning point. in is where nixon s southern strategy and reagan infamous visit to philadelphia, mississippi, in 1980, in the demise of liberal republicanism. this is where they all have their roots. in the 13 presidential elections before 1964, that s the elections from 1912 to 1960, if you added up all of the electoral votes won by each party in the old confederacy, you would get 1,355 for democrats and only 231 for republicans, 54 for third-party candidates. now take the 13 elections since 1964. from that goldwater/lbj race through obama/romney last year, add it up and you get the complete opposite. 1,359 for republicans. only 423 for democrats. 47 for third parties. the third party was basically george wallace, segregationist democrat who ran as independent in 1968. it s gotten progressively worse for democrats. for a while they could win back some of the south by nominating
Democrat won north carolina. last year in 2012 obama won two of those states again and came awfully state in north carolina. these states were winnable for the president because they look different than they use to. they re more diverse. more young professionals. they re not alone. the american prospect magazine ran a series called the end of the solid south. the thesis that rapidly changing demographics will soon make five big southern states serious political battlegrounds. not just florida, virginia and north carolina, but also georgia and texas. among those five states, there are 111 electoral votes. so, have we arrived at another critical turning point in history? one that marks the end of the democratic party s retreat in the south and one that could usher in a new era when being called a liberal and when doing liberal things won t mean automatic political death for candidates in the south. we ll talk about it next. nses w, he can focus on his recovery. he doesn t have to worry s
Candidates from the region. jimmy carter, peanut farm from her 1976 or bill clinton in the 1990s. for decades after 1964 democrats kept chasing after dixie. but the realignment just wouldn t stop. by 2000 native tennesseen, al gore, lost every state south of the mason dixon line. a few years ago a political signist, tom schaller, wrote a book called whistling past dixie, his argument it was time for democrats to give up in the south and build a winning coalition elsewhere. if you look around the south today, that seems self-evident from presidency to state houses to county courthouses, no region in the country as uniformly republican as the south. we look at what happened in 2008, when democrat, a barack obama broke through, and won three old confederacy states, the first time since lbj in 64 a democrat won virginia. first time since carter in 76 a