Southern Democrats in the U.S. Congress have been characterized as an aberrant bloc within the Democratic party. Their conservative ideological propensities have even led them to coalesce with Republicans on many occasions to form the Conservative Coalition. In recent years, however, southern Democrats have become an increasingly liberal group, thereby more closely approximating the stance of the national Democratic party. This article examines not only this recent trend, but also the ideological transformations of southern Democrats since World War II. From 1947 through 1968, the persistent decline in liberalism appears to have been driven by period effects, while the increasingly moderate voting records of southern Democratic senators from the mid-1960s through 1983 seem to have been sparked by cohort and period effects. At no time during the post-World War II era, however, have votes on racial policy had a decisive bearing on the ideological posture of this region's U.S. Senate members.
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