“A 20% increase in a county’s pre-Civil War slave population means a 3% decrease in Democrat whites…

“A 20% increase in a county’s pre-Civil War slave population means a 3% decrease in Democrat whites today”

Some fascinating work at the University of Rochester:

The study looked at data from 93 percent of the 1,344 Southern counties in the Cotton Belt — the crescent-shaped band where plantations flourished from the late 18th century into the 20th century. The researchers found that a 20 percent increase in the percentage of slaves in a county’s pre-Civil War population is associated with a 3 percent decrease in whites who identify as Democrats today and a 2.4 percent decrease in the number of whites who support affirmative action.

The “slavery effect” accounts for an up to 15 percentage point difference in party affiliation today; about 30 percent of whites in former slave plantation regions report being Democrats, compared to 40 to 45 percent white Democrats in counties that had less than 3 percent slaves, according to the authors. Despite the region’s similarity in culture and its shared history of legalized slavery and Jim Crow laws, “the South is not monolithic,” says Blackwell.

Their analysis shows that without slavery, the South today might look fairly similar politically to the North. The authors compared counties in the South in which slaves were rare — less than 3 percent of the population — with counties in the North that were matched by geography, farm value per capita, and total county population. The result? There is little difference in political views today among residents in the two regions.

The past is never dead, it isn’t even past, etc.

Photo via Texas A&M/flickr