The Republican party as it is in the South today took decades to form as Democratic politicians resisted giving up their hold on electoral politics without putting up a fight. However, the Republican Party began adopting winning positions on political issues that shaped today's southern politics: economics, race, and religion. The party’s viewpoint on such ideologies is why the Republican ascendancy was successful in Georgia and the rest of the South. The previous tabs chronicle the political evolution of the positions Democrat and Republican candidates stood for and how these ideals shaped the ideologies of both parties. The Democratic Party adopted a liberal viewpoint on race, economics, and religion. At the same time, Republicans took a more conservative stance. Politics in the South today is an overwhelmingly white, religious, and conservative Republican majority versus a racially diverse liberal Democratic minority.1