THE NATION

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That new dynamic could make the South an interesting place to watch in November. Because the region remains more conservative than the rest of the country, it poses formidable challenges for the presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore. Indeed, recent polls show Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the apparent Republican nominee, with a healthy lead over Mr. Gore in the South, even as he trails the vice president in the rest of the country.

In the last two years, however, Southern Democrats have managed to stall the Republican advance, even in the most conservative states, and some believe those successes provide a glimmer of hope for Mr. Gore. If the vice president can split the South, as President Clinton did by winning four of 11 states in both 1992 and 1996, he is likely to follow his mentor to the White House. Before Mr. Clinton, the lone Democratic success in the previous three elections had been Jimmy Carter's 1980 victory in his native Georgia.

As the remnants of the presidential primary campaign move South this week, with contests on Tuesday in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma, the candidates will encounter a kinetic political landscape that is still searching for partisan definition. Recent elections suggest there simply is no majority party these days in the South, a region where the politics of the moment are often pitched by crosscurrents of race, religion, migration and economics.

Today's South is a place where conservative whites in southwest Georgia can embrace a black Democratic congressman, Sanford D. Bishop Jr., while their compatriots in South Carolina and Alabama rally for the Confederate battle flag.

To prevent Mr. Bush from restoring the Republican lock on the South, Mr. Gore will have to follow a formula tested in recent years by an array of Democratic candidates. It calls for focusing on mainstream concerns like education, Social Security, managed care and urban sprawl, depicting Republicans as right-wing extremists, and maximizing black turnout.

Many Republicans maintain that recent Democratic successes may be as attributable to local circumstances as to any regional realignment. But Democrats argue that more enduring forces may be at work. President Clinton, though disdained for his moral lapses, has demonstrated that Democrats can manage the economy, they say. Welfare reform has disarmed the Republicans of one of their most lethal weapons, and prosperity has quieted the clamor for tax cuts.

A smoking economy and time have softened racial tensions, raising the stakes for Republican candidates who employ racial tactics. And while they are predominantly Republican, the more than 1 million migrants who flood into the region each year tend to be less conservative than native white Southerners.

Gov. Roy E. Barnes of Georgia, who has won high ratings by championing school reform and fighting sprawl, maintains that Southern Democrats have learned how to win again. "We centrist Democrats and the African-American community have come together in a coalition that encompasses a base of middle-class whites," he said. "It's a new emerging common ground, and let me tell you, it's a force to be reckoned with."

Although troubled by Democratic victories in 1998 and 1999, Southern Republicans assert that there is plenty of room for their party to grow with help from continuing immigration, term limits, reapportionment and redistricting. The key, as in the rest of the country, may be whether Republicans can reassure the middle by distancing themselves from the unbending social conservatism promoted by the party's right wing.

"We've got to be better politicians and learn how to package our campaigns," said Representative Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican. "We've got to hold to our conservative credentials and yet speak in more moderate terms."

For the last 40 years, the 11 states of the old Confederacy have undergone a striking political transformation. First gradually, and then with runaway speed, a party that barely existed has supplanted a party that dominated at every level.

IN 1960, there were no Southern Republicans in the United States Senate, none serving as governor, and only seven among the region's 106 members of Congress. As recently as 1980, only 17 percent of Southern state legislators were Republicans, and there were legislative houses in three separate Southern states -- Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana -- without a single Republican member.

By 1998, the apex of Republican strength, the numbers presented nearly a mirror image. Eight of the South's 11 governors, 15 of its 22 United States senators and 71 of its 125 members of Congress were Republicans. In state legislatures, where the power of incumbency has made change more grudging, Republicans now hold 42 percent of all seats and control six chambers. Republicans also have made gains in the suburbs of metropolitan areas like Atlanta.

Polls show that the South did not grow appreciably more conservative during these years. But they indicate that beginning in the Reagan years, conservative Southerners have increasingly identified themselves as Republicans.

In the first half of the 20th century, solid Democratic control of the South was vital to the preservation of white supremacy. That rationale began to disintegrate when national Democratic leaders broke with the party's Southern wing and aligned with the cause of civil rights.

Many Southern whites then found a home in the Republican Party, which was already compatible with their views on economics and defense, and which lured defectors by playing the race card. Paradoxically, Southern blacks, many of them just gaining the right to vote, then flocked to the once-segregationist Democratic Party because of its national leaders' views on race.

The result was an almost exclusively white Republican Party, which is now dominated by religious conservatives, and a biracial Democratic Party where black voters play an equally influential role. That racial dynamic has generated a tried-and-true electoral equation, said Merle Black, an Emory University political scientist. "The Democrats can count on 90 percent of the black vote but typically need 40 percent of the white vote to win," he said. "The Republican Party starts with almost nothing of the black vote and thus needs 60 percent of the white vote."

For most of the last two decades, that calculus has favored the Republicans. But in the last two years the trend lines have shifted.

In 1998, Democratic candidates defeated Republican incumbent governors in Alabama and South Carolina, hung on to the Georgia governorship in a tough race and lost the seat in Florida. The Democrats also picked up one Senate seat that year, in North Carolina. They stopped the Republican advance in the House and gave up only eight legislative seats in 1,782 elections, far fewer than usual. Last year, the Democrats added the governorship of Mississippi. In addition, there has been a slowdown in Democrat-to-Republican party switching.

Those results suggested that centrist Democrats have learned to unite voters around kitchen-table issues, even if their positions upset Democratic interest groups. Republicans, by contrast, remain bewildered about how to both accommodate and control their right wing, a point driven home by this year's primaries.

"What happened to the Democrats in the 70's and 80's is now replaying itself with the Republicans," said Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., a Tennessee Democrat. "There's a discomfort on the part of many Republicans for their party to be known for prayer in schools, pro-life, racial intolerance, Bob Jones and the Confederate flag."

GOV. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican, said that Southern voters are now less concerned with party labels than with performance in areas like education and children's health care. "The Republicans who have proven winners are ones who have tried not to sell their brand but have tried to sell their cereal," he said.

Similarly, Representative Gene Taylor, a conservative Mississippi Democrat, said that his party has been helped by the anemic record of the Republican Congress. "What I now see is people falling out of love with the Republicans," he said. "It doesn't necessarily mean they're in love with the Democrats, but the infatuation with the Republicans has passed. So it's now up to the individual candidates to prove their case. And that's the way it should be."
 

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GRAPHIC: Photo: Commemorating the 1965 march on Selma, Ala. (Associated Press)

Chart: "Left, Right And Now Center"
Between 1960 and 1998 the G.O.P. made large gains in the 11 states that made up the old Confederacy (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia). But the Democrats are now regaining lost ground.
(Sources: The Almanac of American Politics, America Votes and U.S. Guide to the Elections)

Chart: "Campaign Laugh Track"
A running tally ranking the most joked-about poiticians in late-night network TV monologues: Friday night, March 3, through Thursday, March 9.
Bill Bradley
THIS WEEK'S JOKES: 28
PREVIOUS WEEK'S JOKES: 8
PCT. CHANGE FROM PREVIOUS WEEK: up 250

George W. Bush
THIS WEEK'S JOKES: 21
PREVIOUS WEEK'S JOKES: 19
PCT. CHANGE FROM PREVIOUS WEEK: up 11

John McCain
THIS WEEK'S JOKES: 15
PREVIOUS WEEK'S JOKES: 6
PCT. CHANGE FROM PREVIOUS WEEK: up 150

Al Gore
THIS WEEK'S JOKES: 13
PREVIOUS WEEK'S JOKES: 5
PCT. CHANGE FROM PREVIOUS WEEK: up 160

Bill Clinton
THIS WEEK'S JOKES: 9
PREVIOUS WEEK'S JOKES: 8
PCT. CHANGE FROM PREVIOUS WEEK: up 13

Hillary Clinton
THIS WEEK'S JOKES: 2
PREVIOUS WEEK'S JOKES: 4
PCT. CHANGE FROM PREVIOUS WEEK: down 50

'What You Smell, George, Ain't Victory'

"George W. Bush is in town campaigning, and he got to New York City and he said, 'I can smell victory.' I've lived in this town for 20 years. I'll tell you something, what you smell, George, ain't victory."
   David Letterman

"I guess you know Bill Bradley's not doing too good. According to the polls, they said Bradley does great with Democrats that make more than $100,000 a year. You know what you call Democrats that make more than $100,000 a year? Republicans. That's the problem."
   Jay Leno

"These people love Gore and Bush, or as I now call them, Bore and Gush."
   Bill Maher

"The good news for McCain: The rabies test came back negative."
   Jay Leno

Shows monitored: Late Show With David Letterman (CBS); Tonight with Jay Leno (NBC); Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher (ABC); Late Night With Conan O'Brien (NBC; reruns Monday through Thursday not tallied).