by voting for, while 21, all conservative Democrats voted against. Subsequent to the passage of civil rights legislation, many White southerners switched to the Republican Party at the national level. Many scholars have said that Southern whites shifted to the Republican Party due to racial conservatism. Many continued to vote for Democrats at the state and local levels, especially before the Republican Revolution of 1994. Between 2000 and 2010, Republicans/conservatives gained a solid advantage over the Democratic Party in most Southern states. In 2016, Republican candidate Donald Trump won a majority of the vote in Elliott County, Kentucky, the first time that it voted for a Republican presidential candidate. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden narrowly won Georgia, the first time since 1992 that Georgia voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, though Republicans won down ballot in Georgia. Noted modern-day Southern Democrats include Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper, Virginia's U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, Georgia's U.S. Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, and West Virginia's U.S. Senator Joe Manchin. History 1828–1861 The title of "Democrat" has its beginnings in the South, going back to the founding of the Democratic-Republican Party in 1793 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It held to small government principles and distrusted the national government. Foreign policy was a major issue. After being the dominant party in U.S. politics from 1801 to 1829, the Democratic-Republicans split into two factions by 1828: the federalist National Republicans, and the Democrats. The Democrats and Whigs were evenly balanced in the 1830s and 1840s. However, by the 1850s, the Whigs disintegrated. Other opposition parties emerged but the Democrats were dominant. Northern Democrats were in serious opposition to Southern Democrats on the issue of slavery; Northern Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas, believed in Popular Sovereignty—letting the people of the territories vote on slavery. The Southern Democrats, reflecting the views of the late John C. Calhoun, insisted slavery was national. The Democrats controlled the national government from 1853 until 1861, and Presidents Pierce and Buchanan were friendly to Southern interests. In the North, the newly formed anti-slavery Republican Party came to power and dominated the electoral college. In the 1860 presidential election, the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, but the divide among Democrats led to the nomination of two candidates: John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky represented Southern Democrats, and Stephen A. Douglas of