LAT: GOP lock on South cancels Dem Cong., electoral majority in rest of US

[DeepModem Mom]

GOP Has Lock on South, and Democrats Can't Find Key
A Times analysis shows that Bush's sweep of the region went even deeper than first appeared.

By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — The generation-long political retreat of Democrats across the South is disintegrating into a rout.

President Bush dominated the South so completely in last month's presidential election that he carried nearly 85% of all the counties across the region — and more than 90% of counties where whites are a majority of the population, according to a Times analysis of election results and census data....

***

The results underscore the enormity of the challenge facing Democrats as they try to rebuild their Southern support. Most ominously for them, the patterns suggest that under Bush, the GOP is solidifying its hold not just on Southern white conservatives but white moderates as well, a trend also apparent in exit polls of Southern voters on election day....

***

Compounding the Democratic dilemma is the growing tendency of Southern whites who vote Republican for president to support GOP candidates down the ballot....After Bush helped the GOP win six open Southern Senate seats last month, Republicans now hold 22 of the 26 Senate seats in the 13 states....

***

....under a Southern Republican president, the South has become an electoral fortress for the GOP. Outside the South, Democrats hold more House and Senate seats and won many more electoral college votes than the GOP last month. But the GOP's advantage in the region has been large enough to overcome those deficits and create Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and the electoral college....


http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-south15dec15,0,6873286.story?coll=la-home-headlines