📊 New Roll-Call Records From the Post-Reconstruction South (1879–1916)

The elimination of Black voting in the U.S. South after Reconstruction represents the most significant democratic backsliding in American history. Newly collected state legislative roll call records—more than 19,400 unique roll calls from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—are used to examine how Black disfranchisement changed legislative representation.

🔍 How Voting Shifts Were Measured

• Ideal point estimates were calculated in a panel research design to trace legislators' roll-call behavior over time.
• The analysis links changes in those ideal points to the timing and extent of Black disfranchisement across southern states.

🔑 Key Findings: What Changed After Disfranchisement

• Disfranchisement is associated with substantial changes in roll-call voting across the region.
• In states where competitive Democrat–Republican dynamics previously structured roll-call divisions, disfranchisement precipitated shifts away from more Republican roll-call records.
• In states already dominated by Democrats before disfranchisement, the main shifts were internal: roll-call behavior moved toward the agrarian, reform wing of the Democratic Party.

📌 Why This Matters

• These results show Black disfranchisement was central to building the Solid South: it reshaped both interparty balance and intraparty factionalism in state legislatures.
• The findings underscore the significant political consequences of Black suffrage in the years after Reconstruction, altering legislative alignments and policy-relevant coalitions across southern states.