A tortoise representing the Democratic party and a hare representing the Republican party compete for a race to win political support in the South. Although Democrats have not had much historic success in the region since the 1908’s, the midterm elections offer hope and insight for Democrats about how to regain support in the South. Illustration by Lilli Sams
The 2018 midterm elections offered insights for Democrats about running in the South.
Southern Democrats can learn a valuable lesson from the 2018 midterm elections: stop trying to win over Republicans, and start energizing the growing Democratic voter base.
Democrats Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Andrew Gillum of Florida each lost by less than a percentage point in their respective 2018 gubernatorial elections.
In Texas, Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who attracted national attention for his charismatic character and strong liberal agenda, lost by just three percentage points to long-time senatorial incumbent Ted Cruz.
One-third of the seats in the House of Representatives that Democrats picked up were in the South.
For example, gun control advocate Lucy McBath beat conservative Karen Handel in the Georgia sixth district, and Democrat Joe Cunningham won his race in the South Carolina first district, a district that a Republican candidate won by over 20 percentage points in 2016.
These results show momentous progress for Democrats, even from the midterms just four years ago. In Georgia in 2014, Jason Carter, who challenged Nathan Deal, and Michelle Nunn, who challenged David Perdue, both lost by about eight percentage points, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
These Democrats ran on moderate platforms, leading to them to appear as “lite Republicans,” and offered few policies that energized voters.
After the 2014 midterm elections, when many moderate Southern Democrats lost by significant margins, some political commentators argued that Democrats should give up hope of being competitive in the South and focus their attention on more winnable states.
“Democrats should just forget about the (South),” prominent political journalist Michael Tomasky wrote in “The Daily Beast.” “They should make no effort, except under extraordinary circumstances, to field competitive candidates. The national committees shouldn’t spend a red cent down there.”
However, the 2018 elections show that Democrats have a real chance of success in much of the South if they build on the momentum and strategies they developed this year, and recognize the changing demographics of the region.
Stacey Abrams received over 30,000 more votes in this midterm election than Hillary Clinton did in Georgia in 2016, despite midterms generally having lower voter turnout.
In 2012, Ted Cruz beat his Democratic challenger by 16 percentage points, but this year O’Rourke improved that margin by 13 points.
On the other hand, Phil Bredesen, who ran as a centrist Democrat in Tennessee, lost his Senate seat by nearly nine points, which goes to show that the moderate platform used by Carter and Nunn a few years ago still fails to gain traction with the electorate in red-leaning states.
Most of the Democrats in the South who won, or came close to winning, this year ran on progressive platforms, such as Medicaid expansion, gun control and criminal justice reform.
Eight of the 10 House seats Democrats picked up in the South were won by women, and several were won by candidates of color, including Veronica Escobar of Texas and Stephanie Murphy of Florida.
The idea that southern Democrats need to tone down their ideologies and bold progressive plans is based on an idea of the South that is stuck in the past.
The demographics of the South are changing.
According to the 2010 census, the South is the fastest-growing region in the United States, adding 14.3 million people in one decade. More than a quarter of the South’s population is under 20 years old, and from 2010 to 2016 the black population in the region grew by 2 million, while the Hispanic population grew by 3 million.
Attempting to win over the population of more rural, or so-called moderate Republicans, is no longer a winning strategy.
Instead, Democrats need to turn to the rising minority populations, young people, women and college-educated voters who make up their base and focus on getting them out to the polls.
Although it is true that Democrats did not come away with the wins in the South that they had hoped for, the 2018 elections showed the viability of a new kind of strategy for Democratic candidates in the South.
Looking forward to 2020, a successful presidential candidate will be one who is unapologetic about their liberal stances and willing to focus a significant amount of their resources to the swing states of the South.
The era of Jason Carters and Phil Bredesens is over.
If the Democratic party is paying attention, the country is ushering in a world where Georgia and Texas are purple states, and the most successful Democrats in the South are those that espouse strong liberal values.
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