Ideology in the South

We've polled three southern states in the last month: Alabama, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Democrats have varying degrees of success in these places: in North Carolina Obama won and there's a majority Democratic Congressional delegation, in West Virginia Obama got clocked but there's still a majority Democratic Congressional delegation, and in Alabama, well, there hasn't been a lot good news for Democrats recently.

What's interesting though is that the three states break down pretty similarly on ideological lines:

State	Liberal	Moderate	Conservative
Alabama	14	37	49
North Carolina	16	39	46
West Virginia	17	41	43

Digging deeper into the numbers it's easy to figure out why Democrats have so much more trouble in Alabama: conservatives have almost completely left the party. In North Carolina and Virginia around 30% of voters who define themselves that way ideologically are still Democrats but in Alabama just 20% are. And Democrats in Alabama are having a lot more trouble holding moderates as well. While 60% of West Virginia moderates and 54% of North Carolina moderates are still Democrats, just 44% of the ones in Alabama are.

There is no longer the ideological diversity among Democratic ranks in Alabama that once existed and still exists to some extent in North Carolina and West Virginia and that makes it much harder for the party to succeed there in high level elections.

The difference between West Virginia and North Carolina is the disparity between a state with a 3% black population and one with a 20% black population.