Max Eherenfreund in The Washington Post: “In the South, it seems, old prejudices have persisted. Southern counties that had more slaves on the eve of the Civil War are distinct from their neighbors: White residents in those areas are more hostile toward African Americans and they are more likely to vote Republican today, new research shows. Drawing on archival Census figures and recent polls, the study adds to an expanding body of evidence on the importance of racial anxiety to the predominantly white Republican coalition.”
‘Those white Southerners who live where cotton was king are also substantially less likely to identify as Democrats today. Among otherwise similar counties, a difference of 20 percentage points in the enslaved population in 1860 was correlated with a difference of 2.3 percentage points in the share of white Democrats.”
“Recent research by economists Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington suggests that white Southerners who defected from the Democratic party after the civil-rights movement were those with the most conservative views on race. Democrats who held moderate and conservative views on other issues and who lived in other parts of the country largely remained loyal.”
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