[News Terms] 'Harris Storm' Brings Upheaval to the 'Sunbelt' Political Landscape

The Sun Belt refers to the region in the United States south of the 37th parallel north, known for its strong sunlight. It encompasses 15 southern states including California, Texas, and Florida. Ahead of the U.S. presidential election this November, foreign media reported that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, is posing a threat to former President Trump in the Sun Belt region.

On the 17th, The New York Times (NYT) released the results of a joint poll of the two candidates’ approval ratings in four Sun Belt states: North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. The average support for both candidates was tied at 48% each. Compared to a poll conducted in May in three of these states excluding North Carolina, where then-Democratic presidential candidate President Biden trailed former President Trump 41% to 50%, NYT evaluated this as a significant advance. The Sun Belt has traditionally been considered a Republican stronghold.

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Harris
Photo by Yonhap News

The term “Sun Belt” was first used in 1969 by Republican strategist Kevin Phillips in his book The Emerging Republican Majority. This book is famous for presenting a blueprint for the Republican Party to build a sustainable winning coalition in presidential elections by employing the so-called “Southern strategy.” The Southern strategy was an electoral tactic used by the Republican Party in the 1960s to gain support from white voters in the South by exploiting racial resentment against African Americans.

The first person to win a presidential election using this regional resentment strategy was Richard Nixon. Nixon, the Republican presidential candidate at the time, together with Phillips, overturned the Republican image established by Lincoln through the Emancipation Proclamation and opposed the Democratic Party’s policies aimed at improving Black rights, winning the 1968 U.S. presidential election. Subsequently, until George H. W. Bush in 1988, the Republican Party dominated the South for a long period, winning five out of six presidential elections. The only exception was the 1976 election, which the Democrats won as a backlash against Nixon’s resignation from the presidency in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal.

Sunbelt region of the United States
[Photo by Kinder Institute for Urban Research]

The Washington Post (WP) analyzed on the 16th (local time) through its own predictive model that Vice President Harris has a higher chance of winning the presidential election than former President Trump. WP cited seven battleground states, including three Rust Belt states near the Great Lakes (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan) and four Sun Belt states in the South (North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada).

To win the U.S. presidential election, a candidate must secure a majority of the 538 electoral votes from all 50 states, which means at least 270 votes. According to WP, if the current trend continues, Trump would need to win all seven battleground states. On the other hand, Vice President Harris could secure 270 votes by winning just one of either the three Rust Belt states or the four Sun Belt states. Since many electoral votes are concentrated in Democratic strongholds like California (54 votes) and New York (28 votes), securing these fixed votes makes it easier to win the election by only winning some battleground states.

Meanwhile, in this year’s U.S. presidential election, the total number of electoral votes from the 15 Sun Belt states is 234. By state, the numbers are as follows: California (54), Texas (40), Florida (30), North Carolina and Georgia (16 each), Arizona and Tennessee (11 each), South Carolina and Alabama (9 each), Louisiana (8), Oklahoma (7), Nevada, Mississippi, and Arkansas (6 each), and New Mexico (5).