The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics

In The Long Southern Strategy, Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields trace the consequences of the GOP's decision to court white voters in the South. Over time, Republicans adopted racially coded, anti-feminist, and evangelical Christian rhetoric and policies, making its platform more southern and more partisan, and the remodel paid off. This strategy has helped the party reach new voters and secure electoral victories, up to and including the 2016 election. Now, in any Republican primary, the most southern-presenting candidate wins, regardless of whether that identity is real or performed. Using an original and wide-ranging data set of voter opinions, Maxwell and Shields examine what southerners believe and show how Republicans such as Donald Trump stoke support in the South and among southern-identified voters across the nation.

Angie Maxwell is the Director of the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society, an associate professor of political science, and holder of the Diane D. Blair Endowed Professorship in Southern Studies at the University of Arkansas. She is the co-editor of several volumes and the author of the The Indicted South: Public Criticism, Southern Inferiority, and the Politics of Whiteness, which won the Southern Political Science Association's 2015 V. O. Key Award for best book in Southern Politics.

Todd Shields is the Dean of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas. He is the co-author or co-editor of several books, including The Persuadable Voter: Wedge Issues in Presidential Campaigns, which won the American Political Science Association's 2009 Robert E. Lane Award for the best book in Political Psychology.