Reconsidering the “Southern Veto”: The Two-Thirds Rule at Democratic National Conventions, 1832–1936

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AbstractBeginning from 1832, the Democratic Party required a two-thirds majority at national conventions for the nomination of presidential candidates. Despite assessments that this “two-thirds rule” produced excessively long and disruptive nomination battles and low-quality presidential candidates, the rule survived until 1936. The rule's longevity is generally attributed to it functioning as a “Southern veto”: while the Democratic Party performed strongest electorally in the South in this period, the region's representation at conventions was small in comparison. By setting the bar for presidential nominations high, the South was given the ability to block unacceptable candidates. However, while the “Southern veto” argument is pervasive, there are little data and few concrete examples of Southern delegates blocking Democratic nominations through the two-thirds rule. In this paper, I reassess the two-thirds rule's history and appliance and show that Southern states barely had enough votes to block nominations and generally would need to vote against a candidate at a rate of nearly 90 percent to do so. As a result, the South almost never vetoed candidates: in only one case (Martin Van Buren in 1844) was Southern opposition pivotal in preventing a candidate with majority support from winning the nomination. Additionally, the two-thirds rule was generally accepted by broad majorities in the party (both Southern and non-Southern) and, while Southerners were among the defenders of the rule, representatives of the region were also among those opposing it. These findings suggest that the two-thirds rule rarely functioned as a Southern veto—not because the South had no power in the Democratic Party but because the necessity of maintaining intraparty consensus applied regardless of the existence of the two-thirds rule.