North-South Political Divide Alive And Well

The South (basically, the states in the former Confederate States of America, with some additional border states) remains deeply divided from the rest of the United States in their opinions about the Obama administration (and more generally about politics).

This tendency fits well with the meme of the Republican party as a regional party of the South, rather than a national party, these days. Even the people who used to make up the Republican party in the Northeast are so different from their Southern peers politically, that they increasingly can't fit in the same political tent while remaining politically viable.

The distinction is even more pronounced when one considers that African Americans in the South, as in the rest of the country, are overwhelmingly Democrats who are pleased with Obama's performance compared to the nation generally, and more Southerners are African American on a percentage basis than in any other part of the country.

In other words, Southern white voters are profoundly different politically from white voters in the rest of the country. They are monolithic and united around a very conservative core of principles in a way that white voters elsewhere are not.