PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN FLORIDA: CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY

OF TRADITIONAL VOTING PATTERNS

Mark Stern

INTRODUCTION

This paper presents evidence as to the continu- ity and discontinuity in Florida presidential voting patterns I t examines the extent to which the Johnson-Goldwater election of 1964 was a "deviant" election and the impact of population growth and socio-economic change on presidential voting in Flor- ida. This paper also presents evidence concerning the persistence of a traditional, llold South" vote, which has ties that go back from 1948 up to the presidential election of 1980.

A n analysis of Florida Presidential voting pat- terns may be suggestive of voting patterns and alignments elsewhere in the South. A decade ago Dauer wrote of "Florida: The Different State," in the context of southern politics (Dauer, 1972). It is the perspective of the present analysis. that Florida's soc i o-e c ono m ic development and pol i t ic a1 change s have been paralleled by the rest of the South in recent years. Florida was different in the past because, in comparison to much of the South, its population was: more urban, better-off economically, more Republican, more non-southern in origin, and less oriented to the politics of a relatively small black-belt area. Its politics and economics did not often evolve around the race issue and t h e fear of black political potency in t h e state, although there clearly was a northern agriculturally based coalition of interests that dominated the state (Black, 1976). Through the 1960's the rural northern section of the state often dominated the Democratic party and the

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politics of the state, despite the presence of a much larger metropolitan-based population in the southern two-thirds of t h e peninsula (Price, 1957). By the 1970's, however, in t h e wake of Baker v Carr and the continuing large immigration of individuals into the southern portion of the state, there has been a substantial shift of political power within the state. The state now has a rather obvious dichotomy of interests and political perspectives The northern section of the state may be viewed as an extension of southern Georgia or eastern Alabama, while the southern section of the state may be viewed as an outpost of the metropolitan midwest and northeast states (cf. Havard and Beth, 1962).

In many respects much of the rim South, especially, has changed in the same gmeral way in which Florida has changed: it is urbanizing; it is becoming more economically well-off; it is having an influx of non-native born population at the same time it has witnessed a large out-migration of native born blacks and whites; the relative proportion of its non- white population has declined dramatically; and, it has become more Republican in its voting and voter registration patterns (Stencel, 1980). By and large, the pattern of Republican voting and Republican officeholding in Florida is remarkably similar t o that of the rest of the South.

Republicans constitute only thirty percent of Florida's registered voters and they are concentrated in the more urban areas of the state, especially in the lower two-thirds of the peninsula (Morris, 1981;. Lamis, 1984). Florida's voters have cast their presidential ballots with the majority of all southern voters in every election since 1960. Florida provides an excellent arena for examining southern presiden- tial voting patterns w i t h respect to (1) shifts in party strength and, (2) the continuity and discontinuity of partisan bases of support.

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P a t t e r n s of presidential voting which have held f o r almost a hundred y e a r s in t h e South, have been turned upside down in recent y e a r s The "Solid South" is now a South only of t h e history books. V.O. Key's insights and hypotheses in Southern Pol i t ics may have lost much of the i r relevance f o r t h e region (Key, 1949). Industrialization, urbanization, black and white immigration in and out of t h e region, t h e civil r ights movement and t h e 1965 Voting Rights Act , among o t h e r factors , have combined t o produce sweeping changes in t h e polit ics of t h e South. Some scholars have suggested tha t these changes are culminating in t h e nationalization or convergence of t h e South's poli t ics with t h e nat ion 's poli t ics (Sandquist, 1973). Others are unsure about what exact ly these changes d o mean, except for a rather disorderly par ty polit ics and a growth of Republican support (Steed, Moreland, and Baker, 1980).

The stirrings of change were t h e r e in t h e southern presidential voting revolts of 1928 and 1948. One modern base of Republican support in presiden- t ia l e lect ions begins with the Eisenhower-Stevenson elect ions in t h e 1950's and is repeated in t h e Kennedy-Nixon election. This base i s cen tered in metropolitan u p p e r s t a t u s v o t e r s and is s imilar to t h e base of Republican voting evidenced in much of t h e rest of t h e nation in the post New Deal y e a r s (Strong, 1971). The 1964 Johnson-Goldwater e lect ion upset th i s pa t te rn in t h e South. Goldwater gained v o t e s in t h e previously non-Republican black-belt areas , bu t lost v o t e s among t h e u p p e r s t a t u s metropolitan popu- lation (Cosman, 1965). The Dixiecrat revolt of 1948 also drew its base of support in t h e black-belt, and Goldwater 's campaign emphasis on Wate's rights" w a s aimed at t h i s vote. The specific a f te r -e f fec ts of t h e 1964 elect ion have remained a matter of scholar- ly contention as t h e swirl of change continued in successive e l e c t i o n s Wallace's 1968 campaign, Nixon's sweep of 1972, Car te r ' s southern based candi- dacy of 1976 and Reagan's conservative appeal of

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1980, all apparently tended to diminish continuity in southern presidential voting from election to election. The present study examines intercounty presidential voting support in Florida with emphasis on the 1976 and 1980 presidential general elections and primaries

This study presents evidence in support of the thesis that there still exists within Florida a pattern of presidential primary and general election voting which is related to voting patterns from the era of Key's study. This traditional or "old South" base, it is hypothesized, now operates across party lines as well as within party lines County based election data from Florida is analyzed to demonstrate the existence of this continuity. This data is also used to assess the development of metropolitan Republican voting which emerged in the 1950's and gained strength in the 1960's and 1970's

Presidential Voting: The Democrats

Florida has gone Democratic in only two of the last eight presidential general elections - - in 1964 and 1976. Prior to the current period Florida had been a staunch member of the solid Democrat South in presidential elections A s the population of the southern portion of the state grew in the post World War 11 years, a voting coalition was maintained between the mral, northern Democrats and the big city Democrats. With the exception of only the 1964 Johnson election, it took a combination of majorities built u p Tn t h e northern, rural counties and the southern big-city counties for a Democrat to carry the state (Stem, 1980). Except for the Goldwater J-ohnson election, when a Republican won in Florida it was mainly because of south Florida defections from the Democratic voting ranks An initial analysis of t h e persistence of patterns of Florida presidential election voting is undertaken by examining the be- tween election correlations of all Democratic nomi- nees from 1948 t o 1980. The percentage of votes

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cast in e a c h county f o r t h e Democrat ic presidential nominee in e a c h general election from 1948 through 1980 is utilized t o obtain t h e inter-county Democrat ic correlation coeff ic ients (Pearson's r) and is shown in Table 1.

.9l* -.01 -.U* -. I19 .76* .7U

.I0 -.lo* -.21* .7P .71*

. l a= .]I* .I& -.01

The 1948 through 1960 county-by-county pa t te rn of Democratic support w a s very consistent and t h e 1976-1980 Democrat ic support marks a somewhat diluted return to th is pattern. The elect ions from '1964 through 1972 appear t o have t h e i r own internal consistency, with t h e 1968 and 1972 elect ions mar- kedly more similar in county support p a t t e r n s than is t h e 1964 election with t h e latter t w o e l e c t i o n s Cosman's study of the 1964 elect ion masterfully pinpointed t h e reversal of a hundred y e a r pa t te rn of Democrat ic voting in the South (Cosman, 1965). T h e Florida county d a t a show t h a t no t only w a s 1964 different from t h e past, but so was 1968 and 1972. Goldwater had won rural count ies of t h e South which had not voted Republican since Reconstruction. In Florida, Goldwater carr ied twenty-seven of t h e

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thirty-six north area counties Previously the best the Presidential Republicans had done was Eisenhower's 1956 victories in seven of these counties

4 There remains a scholarly debate as to whether

or not the 1964 election permanently altered southern voting alignments. Table 2 utilizes the Florida county presidential election votes to provide evidence for the case that at least in some respects the 1964 election did not result in a permanent shift in presidential voter patterns Given the very high intercorrelation of county voting patterns for the

TabI. 1. COt1.letlOn CoPlflclcnl (Pennon's I] Florldn'r County Vole Oetv.~n D.lorr.ltc Pres ldm1l . l ~ol~n.... IWO-1980, ~ontroiiin~ rmr n w 0 n m r IIW s w .

.D( .01 **I# .os

1948 through 1960 presidential elections, 1960 is used as the base against t h e later years Region of the state, North or South, is used as a control variable because of the drastically different appeal that Goldwater had in t h e northern part of t h e state as compared to the southern two-thirds of t h e state. Earlier studies (Price, 1957; Havard and Beth, 1962) pinpointed the difference in political patterns be- tween the more rural and traditional panhandle and upper-third of the peninsula, versus the more metro- politan based and non-traditional lower third of the state. The Goldwater wccess in the northern and panhandle regions amplify the continuance of this wit hin-state difference hav ing polit ical man if e st a- tions

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Whereas in the southern section of the state the correlation between the 1960 election and subsequent elections is positive, in the northern section the 1960 correlation is positively correlated only with the Carter elections; it is negatively correlated w i t h the 1968 and 1972 elections In the south, the 1964 election is significantly correlated in a positive fashion with subsequent elections, but in the north there appears t o be no relationship between 1964 and subsequent elections The GoldwatepJohnson elec- tion diminished but did not significantly alter the county patterns of presidential voting in the southern portion of the state; in the northern portion of the state it appears to be unrelated to subsequent electoral patterns in any significant manner. Thus, in the more rural, traditional Democratic region of the state, the GoldwaterJohnson election resulted only in a deviant, nonrepetitive county electoral pattern. The 1968 and 1972 election results are strongly related to each other in both regions of the state, as are the 1976 and 1980 results In both regions, but more strongly in the south than in the north, the 1976 and 1980 Carter pattern is associated with the 1960 (and earlier) county pattern of Demo- cratic voting.

The 1964 through 1972 presidential election voting patterns are different from what came before or after them. Another fact in assessing how "different" these elections are is to examine the continuity or discontinuity in the socioeconomic bases of support for the candidates of a party. Table 3 uses census-based selected county socio-economic characteristics and shows the correlation between each of these variables and the county-by-county vote received by each Democratic presidential candidate from 1960 through 1980. The county population characteristics for the census year closest to the presidential election year is used in each case. (For example, the county population size for 1960 is used

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with the Democratic percentage of the county presi- dential votes in 1960 and 1964. The county popula- tion size for 1970 is used with the Democratic percentage of the county presidential votes in 1968 and 1972).

h d l (1960)

-.n-

-.JW

-.56*

-.36*

-.u*

-.61*

-.U*

.la-

-.)&*

J o b o n (1%)

.16-

. I0

.I5

. I1

.05

. I8

.12

-.07

.U"

. lJ* - .JW -.$S* .L6*

.I7 .DO -.4P -.a*

. J l * .17* - . l9 . - . J P

The larger percentage democratic vote from 1964 through 1972 is generally in the counties with larger populations It is also positively associated with more densely populated and more urban counties, as well as counties with better educated and higher income populations The last population variable, percent of population of foreign stock, is a South Florida metropolitan area variable. The old Cuban community of Tampa and the new Spanish background and other ethnic groups in the South Florida county populations are indicated by this variable. The Democratic vote is also centered in the more u&an,

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South Florida counties in the 1964-1972 presidential elections. The 1976-1980 Carter elections appear to be a return to the older county vote base, in the less densely populated, less urban counties with younger and less educated populations in the north of the state. This occurred albeit, in diminished form relative to overall Democratic voter strength in the p re-E isen how e r ye a r s

Analysis of the pattern of Democratic presi- dential primary elections in 1976 and 1980 helps to reveal the uniqueness of the Carter candidacy. Table 4 shows the intercounty correlation coefficients between the major Democratic nominees (i.e., those candidates who received five percent or more of the primary vote) in these years

h b l m 6 Corrmlacion Coafficimnc (Purson'r r) o f Florida's Caulley Voca I l m m m m n Smlmccmd %.Jar D-critic Prasldmcial Prima- Conrmrc.ncr. 1976 and 1980.

1976 P r F n r r v 1980 PriMrv

Grcmr J.ck.an Shmpp Carcar C a n d y

U.1l.C. - . E l . -.so. -.w .33. -.29*

1976 Carcar .AS* .u* -.02 - .09

Prlmuf Jxkaon . J l * - .56* .u* c S h w p - .319 .22-

-.71*

In 1976 Carter and the other Democrats all have a county voting pattern with a significant negative correlation to Wallace's vote. In 1980 the coefficient of Carter's vote is positively correlated with the 1976 Wallace vote and is negatively corre- lated with the vote of all the Democratic candidates in 1976 and 1980. Clearly a change of the 1976 pattern of county support occurred for Carter in 1980. To explore this further, the correlation

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between selected socioeconomic variables and the county vote for the selected Democratic presidential candidates in 1976 and 1980 is undertaken. The results are in Table 5.

Carter's 1980 support pattern is basically an inverse relationship t o his 1976 county voting support pattern. In 1976 Wallace was t h e different Demo- crat. He was joined by Car te r in 1980 who won support from the rural, younger, less educated popu- lations of Florida. Carter 's county base of support in the 1980 primary had undergone i t s most radical transformation in the southern region of t h e state. The correlation coefficient (Pearson's r) between t h e 1976 Wallace primary vote and the 1976 Car te r primary vote i s -.62; t h e 1976 Wallace primary vote shows a .72 correlation with Carter ' s 1980 primary vote. The "Good Old Boy'' neighbor from Georgia had

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done relatively well in presidential primaries in the north Florida area in both 1976 and 1980. In 1980 the rural southern counties and less metropolitan cen- tered counties much more strongly supported Carter's candidacy than they had in 1976. The importance of this shift in Carter support and its parallels with Wallace support is examined further in this paper in the context of some apparent Repub- lican voting paradoxes Presidential Voting: The Republicans

Republican county presidential voting strength is centered in the more urban, densely populated, better educated and higher income counties, w i t h older populations in the south of the state. On only one occasion in recent history - - Nixon's 1972 sweep of the state - - has a presidential Republican carried both the state as a whole and the north region of the state. Goldwater carried the north region, but lost the state. It has been argued by some authors that Reagan's electoral victory was the culmination of the Goldwater coalition's unsuccessful beginning. In terms of Florida's county vote patterns this is not the case. Reagan's general election county vote support shows a much more marked similarity to Ford's support ( r = .90, p 4 . O l ) rather than to Goldwater's support ( r = .06). Ford's county base of support shows, as one would expect, almost no association with Goldwater's support ( r = .05). Goldwater's county base of support was deviant from the pattern of pre-1964 Florida Republican support, and it remained deviant from the support given to Republican presidential candidates after 1964. The county base of support garnered by Ford in t h e 1976 primary election was not only obviously different from Reagan's base in that year, but it was different from Reagan's 1980 primary support base ( r = -.48, p(.Ol). Reagan's county support was also different from that of t h e other major Florida Republican primary contenders in 1980 (Reagan-Bush,

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r = -.53, p< .01; Regan-Anderson, r = -.48, p < .01). In order to examine the sources of support for major Republican presidential aspirants in recent Florida elections, a correlation analysis between selected county socio-economic variables and the county vote for each candidate was undertaken. (See Table 6).

.J9* - . 3 C

Reagan's 1976 and 1980 county socic-economic profile of support is different from that of t h e other Republican candidates in the primary elections, but in the general election his socic-economic profile of county support is very consistent with Ford's profile of county support. Reagan's base in the primaries was different from that of t h e general elections; h i s voting support shifted to that of the more fVypicalff Republican pattern of support in general elections Reagan's county primary elect ion support is related to Goldwater's 1964 general election vote (for 1976, r = .26, p ( . 05 ; for 1980, r = .20, p < .05) , but h is general election pattern is not related to Goldwater's pattern. Reagan, like Eisenhower and Nkon before him, relied on a base of general election support in the more densely populated, urban, higher SES coun- ties of South Florida.

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Reagan's primary county vote pattern is different from his general election pattern and it is correlated with Goldwater's pattern of support. On the other hand, Goldwater is the "differentfI Repub- lican in terms of his appeal to the type of population that is characteristic of the traditional bastion of southern, rural, Democratic party strength. Wallace and Carter also had a strong southern rural base of support, especially as Carter's base narrowed, ie., comparing the 1976 general election vote with the 1980 general election vote that he obtained. This could be characterized as the Itold South" tie between these candidates in their appeal to a segment of the southern electorate that is usually associated wi th the traditional Democratic South. We would not expect the Wallace-Carter county pattern of support to exist in the 1976 Democratic primary election because of the direct competition between them that year and Carter's obvious appeal to the non-traditional vote as the "new" southerner. Wallace was left the "old South1! field that year. Nor would one expect an "old South" county pattern of voting support to exist for Reagan's 1980 general election vote, given the paral- lel of this vote to the more usual presidential Republican general election pattern. One would expect, w i t h the exceptions noted above, a strong positive correlation of county patterns of voter support for the other presidential elections of Goldwater, Wallace, Carter, and Reagan if there is an "old South" vote that cuts across party lines and elect ions

A test of this "old South" correlation thesis is directly undertaken with a correlation matrix for the latter results (see Table 7). The results do confirm the presence of an operative "old South" pattern of county voter support. The Goldwater correlation w i t h the other candidates is the weakest in this set of correlations The rather deviant pattern of electoral support that has been noted for Goldwater is nega- tively related to both of Carter's 1976 elections A s

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I? - rriurt MI.CIIW c . G.W.I ai.cti-

' . P' . O I 6 . - *' .OI

expected, Carter's 1976 primary election county vote support and Reagan's 1980 general election county vote support are negatively related to the bases of county voter support shown in the other elections But the other Carter, Wallace and Reagan elections are positively correlated with each other. The idea of an ongoing "old South" county voter pattern goes back to the Thurmond election of 1948. Strong commented that !'The supporters of Thurmond consti- tuted a region within a region" (Strong, 1971). Although much has changed since 1948 in Florida county presidential voting there is still "a region within a region" that will support certain candidates whether they run on the American Independent Party line, on the Democratic line, on t h e Republican line, or in the primary elections of the major parties This may account for the reversed patterns of county voter correlations that were found between Carter's own elections and Reagan's own elections

C on clu si on s

The South and Florida, like the rest of the country, cast a majority of its ballots for Reagan in the 1980 presidential election (Ranney, 1981). A recent study utilizing public opinion poll data of the Center for Political Studies concluded that the weakening of partisan ties continued apace in 1980 as

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the short-term effects of candidate performance evaluation and issues were the critical factors in determining the election outcome (Miller and Wattenberg, 1981). Another study based on Florida public opinion poll data sees "the recent partisan changes as signifying the first stage of a critical alignment in Florida (Beck, 1982)." The results of this study, while examining only county level voting data and socio-economic data, tend to support the view of a continuing volatility of electoral patterns, albeit with some critical elements of electoral conti- nuity present.

Contrary to Lamis's (1984) finding that "Florida is no longer a part of the dynamic element of southern politics," we find a strong continuity of southern politics in a major part of Florida politics The Carter pattern of county voter support in the 1976 and 1980 general elections was similar to the pattern of support generated by Democratic candi- dates in general elections prior to 1964. Presidential Republican general election county support generally remains centered in the more urban and growing counties of the state, in a pattern similar t o the Republican vote of the 1950 ' s The Goldwater vote was the exception t o past Republican voting in Florida and the South, and remained the exception in general elections after 1964 (Sundquist and Scammon, 1981). There has developed in Florida a consistent voter grouping that cuts across party and election lines This voter grouping, which w e termed the "old South", has a socio-economic profile that is similar to the characteristics of traditional Democ rat ic voters of the once solid South. Carter did not draw strongly from this base when he ran against Wallace in the 1976 Democratic primary election and portrayed Wallace as the old "good old boy," while he was the "new South'! Democrat. He did draw from t h i s base in his other presidential elections Reagan's 1980 general election vote expanded his primary base and placed him well within the mainstream of presidential

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Republican general election support, but outside his own base of primary election support in 1976 and 198 0.

There exists in Florida, and perhaps elsewhere in the South, continuity in the base of county vote support given presidential Republicans in recent gen- eral elections. The 1964 Goldwater candidacy repre- sents a temporary discontinuity t o this pattern. There also continues t o exist, as V.O. Key termed it, a "faintly tropical rebel yell" in Florida, which now cuts across parties and elections (Key, 1949). In t h e present analysis this is called t h e "old South1! vote and, it is suggested, it may exist elsewhere in t h e South. It is no longer exclusively tied to t h e Democratic party, although i t s geographic core may be located in what had been the base of t h e old Democracy. From this viewpoint, t h e 1980 presiden- tial primaries and general elections represent both continuity and discontinuity of traditional Florida voting pa t te rns This study suggests that in some respects the "old South" lives amidst the coming of the new South t o political maturity. In Florida, and perhaps in much of t h e South, the new party realignment that emerges will still have an identi- fiable component wi th roots tied t o the old IrDemoc- racy."

REFERENCES

Beck, Paul Allen. "Realignment Begins? The Repub- ' lican Surge in Florida," American Politics Quarterly 10, October, 1982, pp. 421-38.

Black, Earl. Southern Governors and Civil Rights Racial Segregation as a Campaign issue in the Second Reconstruction, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.

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Cosman, Bernard. Five States for Goldwater: Con- tinuity and Change in Southern Voting Patterns, 1920-1964, University, AL: University of Ala- bama Press, 1965.

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Dauer, Manning J. The Changing Politics of t h e South, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972.

Havard, William C. and Loren P. Beth. The Politics of Mis-Representation: Rural-Urban Conflict in the Florida Legislature, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1962.

Key, V.O. Southern Politics in State and Nation, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949.

Lamis, Alexander P. The Two-Party South, N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Miller, Arthur H. and Martin P. Wattenberg. "Pol- icy and Performance Voting in t h e 1980 Elec- tion." Paper presented a t the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 3-6, 1981.

Morris, Allen, ed. The Florida Handbook, 1981-1982, 18th ed., Tallahassee: Peninsular Publishing Co., 1981.

Price, Douglas The Negro and Southern Polit ics A ChaDter in Florida Histolv. WestDort. Conn:

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GreGnwood Press, 1957.

Ranney, Austin, Ed. The American Elections of 1980, Washington, DC: The American Enter- prise Institute for Policy Research, 1981.

Steed, Robert P., Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker, e d s Party Politics in t h e South, New York: Praegar Publications, 1980.

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Stencel, Sandra. "The South: Continuity and Change," in American Regionalism: Our Eco- nomic, Cultural and Political Makeup, ed. Edi- torial Research Reports, Washington DC: Con- gressional Quarterly, Inc., 1980.

Stern, Mark. "Florida Elections,ft in Manning J. Dauer, Florida's Politics and Government, Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1980.

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Strong, Donald. "Further Reflections on Southern Politics," The Journal of Politics 33, May 1971, pp. 239-56.

Sundquist, James L. Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. 197 3.

and Richard M. Scammon. !!The 1980 Election: Profile and Historical Perspective," in Ellis Sandoz and Cecil V. Crabb, Jr., eds. A Tide of Discontent: The 1980 Elections a d Their Meaning, Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1981.

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