This map of party control of state legislatures 50 years ago blew us away. In 1975, Democrats set the record for partisan control of state legislatures in the wake of the Republican/Nixon Watergate disaster. There were only four states where Republicans controlled the House and Senate. Ironically, one of them was Vermont – perhaps the most liberal state in the country today.

What is especially striking was the South was solidly Democratic all the way from South Carolina west to Oklahoma. These were the Jim Crow-era Democrats.

Now compare that map to this one for 2023:

This is almost an exact reversal. The South is now solidly red and the coastal states of the Northeast and the West Coast account for the few remaining strongholds for the Democrats.

The other striking feature is that as the South has become redder, its economic growth has correspondingly exploded in most of these States down in Dixie.