After the civil war, the states began to change in a noticeable way – the south, which was heavily reliant on slaves and was generally more racist went Democrat because at the time the party as a whole was supportive of slavery, racisim, and ironically enough helped create hate groups such as the KKK. In the north, slavery was already banned and most people there did not like slavery and leaned towards being Republican. Abraham Lincoln was likely the person to cause this trend. While not always perfect this trend kept up until around the early 1960s. At that time President Lyndon Johnson signed many laws that effectively ended discrimination in the south and north. Because of this the trend reversed and South went Republican and the North went Democrat.
In 1976 however Jimmy Carter, a Southern Democrat took the south from Northern Republican Gerald Ford. In 1980, 84, and 88, Democrats lost in landslides. In 1992 southerner Bill Clinton won against George H.W. Bush also a southerner. This was likely because of a mini recession and the help of independent Ross Perot, who gathered almost 19% of the total vote. In 2000 however George Bush won against Clinton vice president Al Gore by 537 votes in the state of Florida and the result of the election is still a controversy to this day. Something else happened though- Bush somehow managed to retake the entire south from the Democrats. This was likely because of a scandal in the Clinton Administration and because Gore was seen as too liberal in the issue of coal. In 2008, Barack Obama went on to win the presidency by winning traditional Democratic states in the north and some republican states, plus florida. In 2016, Donald Trump against all odds beat Hillary Clinton by breaking through in the midwest which is a northern area. However in 2020 Democrat Joe Biden won, retaking Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, plus Georgia and Arizona states that are supposed to be a southern Republican stronghold.
In the future I think that the south, especially Texas, will continue to get bluer because of Hispanic immigration, and that Republicans may make more gains in the North.
But all and all I think we can all come together Republicans and Democrat to cast our vote, because as Barack Obama once said “There’s no such thing as a vote that doesn’t matter. It all matters.”