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In the 1960s, there appeared to be a clear partisan difference inside Protestantism . Mainstream Protestants were noticeably more attracted to Republican candidates for Congress than were evangelical Protestants, who were instead classically “southern Democratic.” Some of this was an indirect reflection of social class. The modal income tercile among mainstream Protestants was the top; the modal income tercile among evangelical Protestants—recall that these are white evangelical Protestants—was the bottom. More of this difference was just a reflection of old versus new Republican areas. Mainstream Protestants were more common in the old areas; evangelical Protestants were more common in the new (tables not shown). Yet even with these indirect influences controlled, there remained a partisan difference between the two great Protestant families. Beyond them, neither Catholics nor Others, nor both together, were sufficiently numerous to play a serious part in this aggregate regional story in the 1960s. Again, it is nearly impossible to know if this story would have been different in the 1950s. Regardless, in the 1970s and 1980s, the apparent difference in partisan preference within denominational Protestantism essentially disappeared. Moreover, as table 8.9 attests, this disappearance was entirely traceable to the evangelical Protestants. They were newly attracted to Repub lican candidates for Congress—now to the same degree as the mainstream Partisan Change in the Post-Key South ■ 179 Table 8.9. Religious Families and Partisan Voting: The House (Republican percentage among all whites in contested districts) DECADE RELIGIOUS FAMILY TOTAL (%) RANGE1 RANGE2 Low High Catholic Other High-low Protestant Protestant (%) (%) (%) (%) 1960s 34 46 — — 39 -12 — (N) (218) (198) (38) (11) (465) 1970s 42 46 — — 42 -4 — (N) (378) (248) (77) (47) (750) 1980s 48 49 — — 49 -1 — (N) (316) (161) (42) (49) (568) 1990s 62 65 51 33 48 -3 +29 (N) (361) (246) (99) (82) (788) 2000s 72 57 56 34 59 +15 +38 (N) (734) (439) (330) (307) (1,810) 1 Range = difference between evangelical (low) and mainstream (high) Protestants 2 Range = difference between evangelical Protestants (low) and Others Protestants—while there was no real change among the latter. The critical fact about Catholics and Others was just that they remained only marginal electoral players. As a result, the 1970s and 1980s became the decades when, with a burgeoning class realignment under way across the South and with legal desegregation being simultaneously negotiated, denominational attachments retreated to an effective irrelevance. This was most definitely not the case for the 1990s and 2000s, where denominational attachment was associated with substantial further partisan change. For the first time, both Catholics and Others contributed more than 10 percent of the southern electorate; neither would subsequently fail to do so. In the 1990s, both were additionally distinguished by their lesser support for Republican congressional candidates, the Others especially so. In the nation as a whole, the 1990s were also the first decade in which evangelical Protestants surpassed mainstream Protestants as the most Republican denominational family, despite a residual class bias conducing in the opposite direction . It was not until the 2000s that this trend was likewise reflected in the South. When it was, the total religious array in Dixie looked much like that in the rest of the country: evangelical Protestants strongly Republican, Others strongly Democratic, Catholics and high Protestants clustered in-between. This religious array looked much like the rest of the country in a second sense as well. For there was now a sizable partisan distance just between evangelical and mainstream Protestants (range1 in the 2000s at table 8.9) and a further distance between evangelical Protestants and the Others (range2 ). What was different for the South was the disproportionate presence of those evangelical Protestants. Comprising approximately 20 percent of the non-South, they constituted approximately 40 percent of the South, which was effectively their “homeland region.” Roughly the same things can be said about voting for president by the four great denominational families, albeit with modestly stronger relationships throughout. Thus the 1960s were again a decade characterized by partisan distinctions within Protestantism, though with the presidency by comparison to Congress, the gap between the two major Protestant families was considerably larger. Mainstream Protestants appeared as even more Republican, while evangelical Protestants remained impressively resistant to partisan change. As with Congress, neither Catholics nor Others were numerically consequential. This internal Protestant difference hints again at a distinctively anchoring influence for evangelical Protestantism, cementing it into the old southern democracy. But in the absence of comparable data for the...

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