Abstract Election results act as powerful signals, shaping social behavior in ways that can be dramatic and even violent. This article shows how racial violence in the post-Reconstruction U.S. South was tied to the local performance of the anti-Black Democratic Party in presidential elections. Using a regression discontinuity design based on close presidential vote shares, we find that Southern counties where Democrats lost the popular vote between 1880 and 1900 were nearly twice as likely to experience Black lynchings in the following four years. Despite no corresponding changes in local office holding, these defeats were salient among local elites. We show that Southern newspapers, closely aligned with the Democratic Party, amplified narratives of Black criminality in the aftermath of Democratic losses. Such accusations were, in turn, frequently invoked by lynch mobs. These findings point to the strategic use of racial violence by Democratic elites, foreshadowing the institutionalized vote suppression of Jim Crow.

Abstract This article shows how the migration of millions of Southern whites in the twentieth century shaped the cultural and political landscape across the United States. Racially and religiously conservative, Southern white migrants created new electoral possibilities for a broad-based coalition with economic conservatives. With their considerable geographic scope, these migrants hastened partisan realignment and helped catalyze and bolster a New Right movement with national influence over the long run. More than just augmenting the conservative voter base outside the South, they influenced non-Southerners by building evangelical churches, diffusing right-wing media, and mixing through intermarriage and residential integration. Tracking non-Southern households, we show that exposure to Southern white neighbors increased adoption of conservative religious norms. Overall, our findings suggest that this mass migration blurred the North–South cultural divide and reshaped the geography of conservatism in the United States.