Will Demographics Transform Southern Politics?

… It seems an overstatement to say that Southern Republicans are in outright denial about the fact that whites will be a minority in America around 2043. It does seem fair to say that the national Republican Party is underreacting, and Southern Republicans seem to be especially resistant to appealing […] Read more »

Democrats increasingly think the Confederate flag is racist. Republicans don’t.

… Mass politics has become more polarized by racial attitudes because of Barack Obama’s rise. As I show, the election of President Obama helped usher not a post-racial but a “most-racial” political era. Racially liberal and racially conservative Americans are now more divided over a host of political positions — […] Read more »

2015 State of the First Amendment Survey

The State of the First Amendment survey, conducted each year since 1997 by the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center, tests Americans’ knowledge of their core freedoms and samples their opinions on First Amendment issues of the day. The 2015 survey questions covered topics including the use of Confederate flags on […] Read more »

White support for the Confederate flag really is about racism, not Southern heritage

The killing of nine black churchgoers by a white gunman, Dylann Roof, in Charleston, S.C., sparked a nationwide debate over the Confederate battle emblem. … Drawing on rare survey data on this subject, we can shed light on this question. We find that white Southerners who support the Confederate flag […] Read more »