Electoral Patterns in Alabama

While significant attention in political science is devoted to national level elections, a comprehensive look atstate level political dynamics in the United States is so far sorely missing, and state level electoraldevelopments and shifts are treated as mere reflections of national-level dynamics and patterns. This book argues that this significantly impacts our ability to understand macro-level electoral shifts in the United States ingeneral. The book analyzes gubernatorial, congressional, and presidential election results in the state ofAlabama from 1945 through 2020. Comprehensive maps of county-level partisan shifts over time andcomparisons between trends for different offices make it possible to isolate pivotal elections and comparestate-level and national trends over time. When and where did Alabama's electorate break with the Democratic Party, and were these breaks uniform across the state? Which counties shifted the most over time, and wasthis shift gradual or characterized by changeelections? Comprehensive electoral data, on the county- and precinct-level, make it possible to answer thesequestions and place state-level electoral behavior in its regional and national context. Detailed county level demographic and economic data is used to provide local context for electoralpatterns, shifts, and continuities.