David Lublin's book attempts to describe and explain partisan change in the South. It examines the growth of Republicanism across the full range of elected offices, from president down to county officials, and investigates the role that issues, elites, and electoral arrangements have played in the political transformation of the South. This is an ambitious agenda for a book of fewer than 280 pages, but for the most part the author pulls it off. Lublin's success in covering such a broad topic is accomplished in part by relying on previously published work (some of which is his own). Thus, the book is partly a synthesis of existing work, but it also includes new data and analysis.

One key theme is that Republican gains were less than what they could have been because the party often was unable to recruit candidates for office. In investigating this topic, Lublin presents data on the extent of Republican contesting of congressional, state, and local offices over time. Since state legislative and local elections have received little attention in the literature on southern politics, the focus on these lower-level offices is a valuable contribution. However, it is unclear whether the growing ability of Republicans to recruit candidates is the reason why Democratic dominance ended, as the author suggests (pp. 75, 93), or the result of the erosion of Democratic loyalties in the electorate. Attributing the Republican lack of success to a failure to run candidates seems to contradict the “strategic politicians” perspective that Lublin employs in the book (pp. 70–72), a perspective that argues that candidates will come forward when the perceived likelihood of winning is sufficiently high. This argument suggests that when a Democrat ran unopposed, it was because potential Republican candidates thought that the chance of defeating the Democrat was low. It also suggests that conservative Democratic officeholders would not switch parties unless they felt that the time was right.

A possible answer to the question of what causes what is that even running an unsuccessful candidate for office benefits a party, both by increasing party visibility to the electorate and by creating a set of potential candidates for future office who have campaign experience, even if that experience was a losing one. These are collective and indirect benefits that might not motivate a strategic politician to run, but they are reasons why the party might attempt to vigorously recruit candidates for races where there is little chance of victory. This explanation is hinted at in the book, but it is not fully developed.

Lublin also examines electoral arrangements that have contributed to Republican success. Since he has previously written a great deal about redistricting, it is not surprising that this topic receives considerable attention. The central question here, as it has been in many other studies, is whether creating majority-minority districts has benefited Republicans. The author's analysis of state house races is particularly interesting. He estimates that of the 105 state house seats lost by Democrats between 1990 and 1994, 60 would have been lost even if no redistricting had taken place; these losses were simply due to shifting voter behavior. That leaves 45 seats that represent Republican gains produced at least indirectly from the post-1990 redistricting, certainly a substantial number.

Lublin argues that redistricting affects candidate recruitment. First, the presence of a Democratic and/or a Republican candidate is influenced by the racial composition of the district. Republicans are less likely to run in districts that are disproportionately black, for example. Redistricting and shifting partisan loyalties also affect candidate recruitment by affecting the composition of the primary electorate. Increasingly, the Democratic primary is likely to produce a liberal candidate. All of this contributes to a growing polarization of the parties, a phenomenon that has been reported in a number of studies.

Another topic that receives substantial attention is the role of issues in southern elections. Lublin argues that Republican voting stems from conservative orientation among whites on a variety of issue dimensions—economic, social, and racial (we probably could add foreign policy and defense issues to the list). Among white partisans, differences in orientation between Democrats and Republicans have steadily increased over the past quarter century on all three issue dimensions. Lublin's investigation of this topic rests on limited data, as he examines responses to only three items (government job guarantee, affirmative action, and abortion) from white southern respondents to the American National Election Studies (a small n drawn from a limited number of sampling points for each year). Nevertheless, his findings are consistent with those of other studies, and so his conclusions seem sound (e.g., see Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans, 2002, pp. 241–67; Jonathan Knuckey, “Ideological Realignment and Partisan Change in the American South, 1972–1996,” Politics and Policy 29 [June 2001]: 337–60).

The Republican South is a rich study that contains many observations and conclusions about partisan change in the region. Those who are interested in southern politics will find much to think about. Given the scope of the analysis, it is not surprising that many of the ideas put forth could be investigated more, and so it is likely that this book will stimulate further research by scholars interested in southern politics. The book could have been improved by including a bibliography or reference list. I found it difficult to track down references, especially because subsequent references to a publication receive only an abbreviated citation. Thus, for example, one finds a reference to “Jacobson 2001” at the bottom of p. 77. It took me considerable searching through earlier footnotes to find the full citation for this publication. Similarly, I searched at length for the full citation for “Sundquist 1993” (bottom of p. 217) but never found it (I suspect that it should have been 1983). This may seem like a very picky criticism, but in a book that synthesizes so much existing literature, it would be helpful to be able to easily obtain the full citations for items.