The politics of Louisiana involve political parties, laws and the state constitution, and the many other groups that influence the governance of the state. The state was a one-party Deep South state dominated by the Democratic Party from the end of Reconstruction to the 1960s, forming the backbone of the "Solid South." This was due to the near-total disenfranchisement of the state's large African-American population during this time, who mostly voted Republican. The Civil Rights era turned the state into a competitive one on the federal level, as it voted for the nationwide winner in every election between 1972 and 2004. It remained Democratic on the state and local level until the turn of the 21st century, allowing Republicans to win control of the state legislature and every statewide state-level office in 2011. Republicans won their first Senate seat in Louisana since Reconstruction in 2004, and captured both seats in 2014 for the first time since 1872. In the 2008 election, the state voted for a losing presidential candidate for the first time since 1968, and Democrats have not won at least 40% of the vote there since 2012. History In the aftermath of the American Civil War during Reconstruction, Louisiana was governed by Republicans. They were soon replaced by Democrats who established Jim Crow laws that eliminated Black political participation for nearly 100 years. Between 1880 and 1960, the state voted Republican for president once (in 1956), and exclusively elected Democrats to all statewide offices and they dominated the state legislature and congressional delegations. In the early 20th century, Louisiana retained a pocket of Republican strength centered around the sugar parishes west of New Orleans, where farmers favored the GOP's position on protective tariffs. According to The Louisiana Elections of 1960, whose authors include the late sociologist Perry H. Howard, from 1920, the year of the election of Warren G. Harding as U.S. President until 1956, the reelection of Dwight D. Eisenhower, "a number of parishes, many in close proximity, have consistently supported the Republican party at close to or significantly above the presidential Republican vote average. Apart from some of the urbanized parishes, the majority of these parishes are in south Louisiana; in fact, they form a cluster in the sugar cultivation area west of the Atchafalaya swamp and along Bayou Lafourche and the Mississippi River below Baton Rouge." In the decades following the beginning of the Civil