How come more Dixiecrats voted for Clinton in 1996

[DoYouEverWonder]

then they did for Kerry in 2004? These numbers just don't make sense to me. Especially, when you see this pattern no where else in FL, except in the Dixiecrats counties. Everywhere else in the state (because of huge voter turn out in 2004) Kerry has significantly more votes then Clinton, which is what you would expect.


County Clinton/1996 Kerry/2004

Baker 2273 2180
Bradford 3356 3244
Gulf 2480 2407
Hardee 2417 2149
Holmes 2310 1810
Taylor 3583 3049
Union 1388 1251
Washington 2992 2912

Total 20799 19002

In 1996 Clinton got 2,546,600 votes total in FL. In 2004, Kerry got 3,583,544 votes total. So even with a million more people voting in this state, Kerry still go fewer votes than Clinton in just the Dixiecrat Counties? No way.

[Barack_America]

1. Two possibilites: war & gays n/t

[berniew1]

29. Note that Miami Herald hand recount of 3 of these showed big Kerry gain

As seen on other threads, the hand recount by Miami Herald of 3 north Florida counties in 2004 showed big Kerry gain, enough to mean Kerry would win Florida if recount continued and all counties had similar increase.

[DoYouEverWonder]

31. Yep, a few votes here, a few more votes there

it's just so easy to flip and election.

[googly]

42. yap you got that right, no 911 and no gays getting married.

Kerry would have won easily except for those two issues in 2004.

[bj2110]

2. Has anyone checked southern Alabama/Georgia counties?

To test out this "Dixiecrat" theory? If it truly is an actual trend, i.e. high levels of registered Democrats who vote Bush, let's check the theory in other similar areas as well.

And yes, I agree, something is still fishy to me with those numbers. But, you have to remember that Clinton was an incumbent with a good track record at the time, running against a relatively weak opponent.

[On the Road]

13. Yes, That's a Really Good Approach

If Florida Dixiecrat counties were padded for Bush, it should end at the state line, and make a very convincing electoral map.

[tx_dem41]

3. Possibly because Florida is unique within the South.

It has such a transient and immigrant (from other states) population it really doesn't represent the "true" South. My guess is that many Dixiecrats (a small, fairly isolated demographic in Fla) found it easy to vote for a fellow Southerner vs. a "Yankee". You know, that whole Civil War thang. ;)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. Prejudice

Clinton was a Southerner. They wanted another Southerner in power.This is not as stupid as it sounds. When I met with the local Democratic Party chair in my home county here in AR before the primaries, he flat out told me that unless Clark or Edwards were nominated, the local party would do NOTHING to support the Democratic candidate. When Kerry was nominated, even with Edwards as VP, that's exactly what they did. My independent group was the one who paid for pro-Kerry ads in the paper, did letters to the editor, and offered rides to the polls.

[bj2110]

8. That's disgusting. I sure hope the Dems stick to their guns...

and don't play to these types in future elections. We truly have a divided country in more ways than one, if Southern Democrats won't support the party's candidates unless they're like them.

[neohippie]

15. those Dems are not really Democrats

Everyone one of you who keeps bringing up this theory that the Dixiecrats don't exist needs to go take a trip to visit with these folks down home in Florida. They are in no way true Democrats. Come down to Florida and see for your self. Ask them a few questions stay for some sweet tea and grits.

Didn't Zell Miller wake you up. These people don't belong in our party.

I was born and raised in Florida, I spent 35 years there and almost 14 of them in north Florida. Although there are many fine Democrats in the state and throughout the south, there are also many Dixiecrats. They might be persuaded to vote for a Southerner, but there was no way they will have ever voted for a Yankee, these are the same good ole boy types who still fly the rebel flag and think that the civil war still can be won.

[BlueCaliDem]

38. Dixiecrats Are Prejudiced Republicans...Plain and Simple.

They're the "blue-dog" Democrats from before the Johnson era; those anti-African American; anti-everything outside the South; anti-immigration and anti everything else the Democratic Party has stood for since J.F, Kennedy.

Believe it or not, they're in California too, only here, at least, they call themselves Republicans, and don't hide behind any "dixie" or "blue dog" mask.

If they still think they can win the civil war, I say let them! TELL them they've won, and that after 140 years of their leaching off of us "yanks", they can go---please!

Let the Yanks set those leaching states out of the union! I'm all for it...I kinda like not having to waste my high taxes on them, and kinda like it that under the flag of "a union", corporations, and corporate crooks like Enron, Halliburton, Cheney, Lay, and their ilk don't use MY MONEY to enrich themselves!

I'd rather pay more to my State, where we take care of the lesser, and the poor here, than send it off to a Republican owned-and operated Fed government where they siphon my hard-earned dollars to ungrateful, racist, discriminating, hateful, confederate flag waving, anti-American folk.

[DTinAZ]

5. perhaps because he sounded like them?

Clinton - Arkansas
Kerry - Massachusettes
Of course, there's a lot more to it than that, and that ignores the fact that Edwards "sounds like them"...but I haven't had any coffee yet this morning...sorry... ;-)

[JI7]

6. Clinton is a Southern Democrat, Kerry is a Northeastern Democrat

[tex-wyo-dem]

7. Yep, plus Clinton had a gift for connecting with middle America

[libmeayer]

23. You are absolutely correct.

It is extremely difficult for a Northestern Democrat in general and a Massachusetts Democrat in particular to win the Presidential Election.

[Poppyseedman]

9. Yes, way

Living in Florida, I can tell you that a northeast liberal like Kerry is a hard sell anywhere in Florida except for the Democratic strongholds in south Florida.

It doesn't surprise me at all that Kerry lost votes compared to Clinton, even with a million more votes cast. Clinton is a southerner, Chimp is a southerner.

Look at the panhandle, lots of democrats, Kerry lost big.

Believe me, it makes a difference. There is palatable dislike for northern politicians in Florida. Democrat or Repug

[myschkin]

12. :-/

Bush is also an east-coast guy...

Fake-Texas-Ranger.

[mirandapriestly]

32. exactly n/t

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. So what's the difference between Kansas and Arkansas?

Plus Clinton was married to that horrible liberal Hitlary, while Dole was married to Ms. Southern Congeniality.

I don't think just because Clinton was a 'southerner' overcame all his other handicaps in the eyes of the cracker mentality.

[JI7]

16. there are more black voters in Arkansas and other southern states

than in Kansas. Clinton did not win the white male voters in these red states, he just did better among them than Kerry did. Kerry only did well among black voters in red states.

[neohippie]

25. Of course there is more to it than just being a Southerner

Gore didn't win either.

How many times did you hear the repugs paint Kerry as more liberal than Ted Kennedy? With Christian conservatives, all you have to do now is bring up C word and they go into fits. Tie any viable moderate southern democrat to Clinton and it hurts them now, thanks to the smear job that the right wing hacks did on him while he was in office.

John Edwards didn't even carry his own state, or his state of birth, so he didn't help Kerry much in the south.

Here in NC, Erskine Bowles, lost a tightly cons tested Senate race, in my opinion because his opposition blasted the television with ads that referred to his service as Clinton's chief of staff.

[pop goes the weasel]

10. Clinton is Southern

He speaks warmly, he smiles a lot, his body language and speech pattern are comfortable and familiar to Southerners. Kerry, OTOH, speaks and moves exactly like a Yankee, which means that, to Southerners, he comes off distant, aloof, and suspicious. So, in the South, the first impression of Clinton for someone who knew nothing about him was that he was folks while the first impression of Kerry was that he thinks he's better than everyone else. Impressions aren't everything, and snap judgments give way to opinions based on experience, but those first impressions are extremely important in a campaign.

[Wordie]

17. Yes, you're right. There is a lot of resentment of northerners in FL,

perhaps more so than in other southern states, because there has been such a tremendous influx of people to FL from northeastern states and many FL natives resent them. Perhaps that resentment is deeper in those counties for some reason, or there are other demographic differences that might also explain it.

[GRLMGC]

34. That's so dumb

I'll admit that I'm not from the Northeast or the South and I don't know if there are still Civil War resentments or what but its so ridiculous that there's such a hatred for the North. I don't know, it just seems irrational to me.

[neohippie]

35. It really is much more complex than that

I am guilty of using generalizations and labels here to describe the situation. It really boils down to the fact that most Southerner's share conservative Christian values, and they don't believe that politician's from the north east represent them.

Since our election system has become a farce of buzz words and media sound bytes, it has been easy for the right wing to paint candidates as being too liberal for the south. The truth gets buried in the smear campaigns, Clinton's lie over a sex scandal becomes more important than all of the lies that we are being fed by the current mis-administration, reality has become very distorted.

Look there are many many educated,intelligent compassionate voters here in the south. I am not being fair to those people when I paint them with such broad brush strokes, but, there are probably more people here who act like sheep when it comes to their religion, they follow the leaders and those people are the real problem. Until we can wake them up from there slumber, or bring a candidate that they feel more comfortable identifying with, we have a big problems.

[GRLMGC]

36. Eh

That makes sense, though I know there are progressives in the South. I just think its so unfair that the Northeast is so demonized and that we can't nominate people from the Northeast for fear of alienating the South. I guess its politically necessary but that gives the impression that there is something wrong w/ Northeasterners and they aren't worthy to be elected.

[neohippie]

37. I live in the south and like many others voted for Kerry

It isn't all of us, and maybe one day it won't be a majority of us, but it seems to be the case right now.

[Wordie]

39. You're right. And add Rove's strategy to target people in their churches,

which as much as I hate it was a highly successful strategy, and the willingness of many pastors to participate in and/or encourage such political action, and there you have it: at least a POTENTIAL explanation for at least SOME of the discrepancy between the Clinton vote and that of Kerry, imho.

[proudtobeadem]

45. Kerry is cosidered to be more liberal than Clinton was. And Fraud

[BlueDog2u]

11. Another possibility: regional loyalty

Clinton was a Southerner. Kerry is from Boston, the Sodom in "Sodom and Gommorah."

/irony off.

[neohippie]

18. They voted for Carter too! but...

You are just plain wrong, go down there and see for yourself or take our word for it.

[DoYouEverWonder]

19. I live 'down there'

what is wrong with the data I presented?

[neohippie]

20. what county do you live in?

I was born and raised in Tampa, lived there until my early 20s, then moved to Tallahassee, worked in state government and lived there 14 years.

Have you traveled to these north Florida and mostly rural counties. Why is it that you don't see that these same people voted for Carter, a religious, southern peanut farmer, from Georgia and voted to elect Clinton, also a Southerner, but would never elect a Yankee?

Also, if you think they will vote for Hillary, you are sadly mistaken.

On edit: I now live in NC and although my county voted for Kerry Edwards, not many others did.

Are you a protestant? Because Churches in the south carry a lot of political clout. Even the Catholic church was telling their voters that they couldn't vote for any official that supported abortion.

[neohippie]

21. I didn't say there was anything wrong with the data that you presented

It is your failure to realize that voters from the south will vote for a southernor but not a north eastern liberal.

[DoYouEverWonder]

26. I live in Alachua

I own a screen printing business, so I do business with a lot of natives and I play old time music, so I get an extra dose of exposure to rural southerners. Most of them are reasonable folks, who have gotten pretty use to us Yankees by now. The only ones that I know that supported Bush around here are the hard core fundies and rabid freepers and all of them were registered Republicans. Even in these so called 'rural' counties, you probably find a lot more old hippies out in them there woods, then you'll find life long southern crackers who are still registered Democratics.

As for the so called Dixiecrats, there just aren't that many of them, not compared to all the people who come from everywhere else that have moved down here.

[trudyco]

27. so do you want us to raise some money

So you can handcount a precinct or two?

I'd also like to see what the number of eligible voters versus registered voters vs voter turnout is. Wonder what the absentee/provisional ballot numbers were, too.

I'd also like to see if the precincts' tabulators tend to give B*sh phantom votes like they did in the miami-herald article.

trudyco

[neohippie]

28. Alachua is not a good example

It's a fairly progressive county. The University of Florida is there, there are organized liberals there. It is more politically active than most counties, has educated voters. My younger brother lives there and my other brother in Jacksonville. I was in Dunellon for Thanksgiving.

I understand your pain, and your desire to make sense out of this election. It is very possible that some votes were tampered with even in the Dixiecrat counties, but I wouldn't consider Leon or counties immediately surrounding that area to be in that category nor would I say the same about Alachua county.

I sincerely hope that some evidence that fraud or vote tampering exists and that it can be discovered, but, being from that area myself, I cannot say that I feel as strongly as you do and would never say never as for those counties voting for Bush.

[DoYouEverWonder]

30. I'm not arguing that they did or didn't voted for Bush

That was not what this thread was about.

My point is that in the entire state of FL, with over 1 million more people voting, only the small Dixiecrat counties did not see increases in DEM turn out for Kerry. In every other county in the state, Kerry got 10,000's more votes than Clinton did in 1996. This is what you would expect to see. Plus, the Dixiecrat counties had proportionally higher increases in voter registration and turnout, similar to the rest of the state, so you would expect to see voting increases across the board, no matter who won or lost. The numbers for Kerry should not have decreased or stayed static, just because so many more people throughout the state were voting this time.

[neohippie]

33. There are Dems in these counties that don't vote like traditional Dems

even if more people registered.


Okay, maybe we need some more information. In the counties you cite for you example, do we know how many new voters were registered and to what party affiliation?

Since Bob Martinez was elected as Governor of Florida and was a Democratic mayor that switched to the Republican party under Reagan/Bush, and also appointed Jeb Bush to be his Secretary of Commerce, and hence brought Jebbie to Tallahassee and Florida has only elected something like 3 Republican Governor's since the civil war, have Republican registrations increased dramatically? I guess I am asking is has there been a shift of the Dixiecrats to the party that they belong in?

If there was a large increase of voter registrations on both sides what issues do you think triggered those people to get out and vote?

Was it the economy? Was it the war or was it those moral issues?

[BeFree]

41. Good Points

Why didn't the Kerry numbers move up even a small percentage?

There were hundreds of newly registered Dems, add just a few of those with the core republican opponents and K should have seen - at the minimum - a five percent increase.

It makes perfect sense.

What is hard to believe is the outright short-selling of that perfect sense by virtue of the nonsense that those people turned on a real democrat just because of where he was from. That's an awful attempt to charecterize many good people to being just plain prejudiced and bigotted. I know a few folks from N Fla. They ain't that way, and anybody attempting to paint them with such a mis-characterization is way off base.

There are good grounds for a much closer examination of the voting numbers in N Fla. The excuses to not do so, as offered on this page should be ignored.

Kerry On.

[neohippie]

44. I didn't provide any excuses not to look into this, just an explanation

In fact look at my post I said "we need more information" and go further as to ask for the kind of information that might provide an explanation

[DoYouEverWonder]

46. Well since you seem to have the time

Maybe you could go dig that info up. I'm busy looking at just the FL numbers. I would love to know what SO GA looks like.

[DoYouEverWonder]

47. Thank you

Besides it's not just this one comparison that's bizarre. Every other one I've done is the same way. For instance, the fact that Betty Castor also got more votes than Kerry in almost every FL county? Especially since there was over 130,000 more under votes in the Senate Race, compared to the President Race.

What I'm seeing is based looking at the numbers and on the reality that I saw for myself in North FL. Bush did not have the support that he would have had to have to get these numbers. Even the freepers that I know were starting to be embarrassed and subdued before the election. Beside, I don't know a single freeper up here that is not a registered REP at this point. If they grew up has registered DEMS, they switched during Clinton because they hate him worse than anything. You want to make a No FL freeper foam at the mouth, just say 'Clinton'. Even, saying 'Kerry' gets no where near the same response.

[BlueCaliDem]

40. Yeah, But They Also Fell Over Themselves to IMMEDIATELY Vote Reagan...

...first chance they got, and ousted "one of their own" {Georgian Carter} for a Republican WESTERNER for heaven's sake!

This alone supports my contention, that "dixiecrats" or "blue dog democrats" are nothing more than Republicans and loyal to the Republican party because the Democratic Party "left them" when they allowed blacks, and jews into their fold.

Prejudicism is nothing more than ignorance about something one doesn't understand; prejudging before any facts are known.

I bet most of them still think that Adam's son Cain was a black man (hence their excuse that blacks should all be hated--in addition to losing their racist right to enslave blacks for cheap labor); the one god sent off after Cain murdered his brother (although the good book never mentioned Cain's skin color).

But CEO's are more than happy to perpetuate and capitalize on the ignorance of people for their overly healthy bottomline, and so we kind of have summed up, what Republicans, Dixiecrats, and Blue Dog Democrats are as a party.

And that's another reason why, I changed party affiliation in '86, more than two decades after African-Americans, and Jews had for basically the same reasons.

[forgethell]

22. Ethnic pride??

Why not?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

24. Two reasons - Bob Dole and Jack Kemp

Bob Dole was a bore ..Jack Kemp had previously taken out full page ads against a very divisive anti-immigration ballot initiative that was passed in California ..once he was nominated vice president, he back pedaled from those ads, but he was seen as liberal

[AJH032]

43. Right

The choice in 1996 was between a successful, popular, incumbent President and an old, boring guy.

The choice in 2004 was between a war time president who scared people into voting for him, and a "liberal Massachusetts senator."

At least, that's how those candidate's were viewed by a lot of the public.

[BushSpeak]

48. Jeb Bush anybody? Excel spread sheet FL 1996 - 2000 - 2004

I've done a spread sheet on Florida election results by county and 04 machine vendor '96 - '00 - '04. This may help you analyze the vote in the North Florida Dixiecrat counties.
http://bushspeak.free.fr/Downloads/Florida_1996-2000_by_vendor.zip

The general trend in the so-called Dixiecrat counties shows a steady
trend since 1996 toward the Republicans. Many of the infamous counties have a 25-30% shift. One has a 39% shift. (You will have to consider that all Perrot's votes went to Bush 7-10%).

The funny thing is that the shift seems rather artificial and too equally divided between 96-00 and 00-04. 12-15% each election.

Jeb Bush influence?

I live in France now, so I'll leave it to the Florida people play with it.

One thing coming out on the Ohio discussion boards is the strong rightward shift since Blackwell was elected Secretary of State (because two Dems split the left vote). He had the authority to name the Election supervisors in all 88 counties. I think some surprising revelations may come out now that Ohio is under the spotlight.

[BushSpeak]

49. Sorry, error about Blackwell's election

I hate it, when you have to spend 15 minutes to double check a message on DU before reproducing the information in your own messages.

Actually, Blackwell won the election for Ohio SoS in 1998 by a margin of 56% against one Democratic challenger. Still, the big majority of the election officials that he has appointed are Republicans.