The Republican Party and the South

Can you be elected President without winning the South? That remains to be seen, but this last election showed that you can certainly gain majority control of Congress without winning the South:

The results produced a historic shift in the balance of regional power in Congress. The majority party in the House is now the minority party among Southern states for the first time since the 83rd Congress in 1953-1954. The same holds for the new Democratic-controlled Senate, except for a brief period in the 1980s.

"With one two-year blip, for the last 50 years, the majority party in the South has been the majority party [in the House and Senate], and that just changed in one election," said Thomas F. Schaller, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County...

This reality is being presented in the traditional media as "the ouster of the moderate Republicans." Hmmm. Well, I guess they have a point. If that's true, then you could also reasonably say that it represents the loss of power for secular Republicans as well, as evidenced by the map (click thumbnail to see larger version). Or more specifically, it may be that those secular voters who used to vote for Republicans are now voting for Democrats.

Bottom line: It may be that it's the Republicans' turn to be a regional, not national, party.