Southern voters, once loyal to the Democratic Party, elected Republican candidates in 1966 as the two parties began to sort themselves into distinctly partisan camps.
View the lesson plan for this storyMidterm Elections: 1966 Midterms Signal a Realignment, Shaping Today’s Parties
Within Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, there was a compelling regional story: many voters in the Deep South, long loyal to a conservative wing of the Democratic Party, voted for the Republican candidate.
Two years later, the 1966 midterm elections would continue that trend, with voters across the South electing Republicans to offices for the first time in nearly 100 years. It was a key moment that affects American politics today, as the two parties began to sort themselves out regionally and ideologically into two distinctly partisan camps.
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