Rural Republican Realignment in the Modern South

"For too long, Political Science has focused almost exclusively on urban politics and has largely ignored the fascinating and politically relevant story of rural politics. Hood and McKee blend historical and statistical analysis to shine a light on how the political transformation of the rural American South can help explain the polarized America of today."—Christopher A. Cooper, Robert Lee Madison Distinguished Professor and Director of the Public Policy Institute at Western Carolina University

"I knew we needed a detailed examination of political realignment in the rural South, but I did not realize how desperate that need was until I read Hood and McKee's Rural Republican Realignment in the Modern South. Too often our historical survey data has polled too many southern city dwellers, whose daily lives and political realities are so different from rural southerners. Gathering the data alone would have been an accomplishment, but Hood and McKee have given scholars and observers of southern politics so much more."—Angie Maxwell, Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society at the University of Arkansas

"Hood and McKee's analysis of the realignment of rural southern white voters from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party is an indispensable contribution to our understanding of this realignment that has reshaped American politics. Readers will better understand American politics and elections as a result of the authors' incisive, rigorous, and comprehensive treatment of this subject."—David Darmofal, Co-author of Demography, Politics, and Partisan Polarization in the United States, 1828–2016

"Hood and McKee's analysis replaces the rural-urban split, instead convincingly establishing population density as a better model. [. . .] This well-written and often entertaining work provides clear-sighted analysis into the transformation of southern party politics."—Choice Reviews

"Rural Republican Realignment in the Modern South is anything but an oversimplification. Hood and McKee examine the realignment office by office, year by year, state by state through the lens of intersectional identities: geographic and racial. This strategy creates space for often-overlooked elements of the realignment, such as the [. . .] ideological differences between urban and rural white Southerners that are masked by similar voting patterns. [It is] a path-blazing study."—Public Opinion Quarterly

Winner of the 2025 V.O. Key Award for best book on Southern Politics, awarded by the Southern Political Science Association