Oklahoma Democratic Party - History

History

The Oklahoma Democratic Party dominated state politics for much of Oklahoma history, with its strength in greatest concentrations in the southeastern part of the state, known as "Little Dixie" because of the post-Reconstruction migration of people from southern states such as Mississippi, Texas and Arkansas.

Upon statehood, all but one of the Congressional seats was held by Democrats. The Democrats won eighteen of the twenty-one gubernatorial elections since its statehood in 1907. The Democratic Party held on average 81 percent of the seats in the state legislature between 1907 and 1973. With the onset of the Great Depression, the party gained even more influence for several decades.

Since the 1980s the party has seen a decline as Christian fundamentalists have shifted to the Republican Party. The Democratic Party has not not attained more than 41 percent of the vote for president. As of 2000 about 55 percent of Oklahoma voters registered as Democrats. The party continues to decline in strength in both the Oklahoma Legislature and executive branch. For the first time since statehood, Republicans hold all statewide-elected offices starting in 2011.

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