Tag Archives: The South

“Southern” Voters Prefer Clinton, Others Mixed

How does the “southernness” of a state affect the Democratic Primary?

Clinton has been doing well in “The South.” Of course, defining what “The South” is is pretty tricky. I divided up the states by “Deep South” vs. Other, so all the usual orginal deep south states count as “southern” except Florida. You know what they say about Florida. “The farther south you go, the farther north you get.” Also, Texas is not deep south in the traditional sense.

Using this rough division, Clinton wins all the time in the “Deep South” and Sanders wins some and loses some in the other states, as shown in this handy dandy graphic:

SouthernVsNotSouthernStatesandDemocraticPrimary2016

This is good news for Sanders, because the three big states coming up are New York, Pennsylvania, and California, and they are not in the deep south. Of the remaining states, only Kentucky is southern. So, this biases future primaries, given this one variable, towards Sanders.

Being “deep south” vs. not is in and of itself a bit of a meta-variable, associated with other factors with in the Democratic Party, mainly ethnicity.