ABSTRACT
White Republicans have traditionally been labeled "scalawags" and "nigger lovers"—epithets which express the most extreme form of disfavor and which reveal the heart of the political situation in the South. For all practical purposes, the South has only one political party. In the 1940 election, for example, 76% of all votes were cast for the Democratic candidate for President. In the extreme cases of Mississippi and South Carolina, 98% of the votes went to the Democratic candidate. There are two important limitations, though, to the South's influence on the Democratic Party and thereby on the nation. First, it can practically never hope to control the Presidency, since the Democratic candidate for President is almost sure of the South but must be especially attractive to the North. Second, the Democratic Party is solicitous of the Northern Negro and has been successfully weaning his vote away from the Republican Party. There is one other type of election that is important to the Negro in the South.
