But air-conditioning arguably had the most significant impact on Presidential politics. Swelling populations in Florida, Texas, and Southern California shifted the electoral college toward the Sun Belt, with warm-climate states gaining twenty-nine electoral college votes between 1940 and 1980, while the colder states of the Northeast and Rust Belt lost thirty-one. In the first half of the twentieth century, only two presidents or vice presidents hailed from Sun Belt states. Starting in 1952, however, every single winning presidential ticket contained a Sun Belt candidate, until Barack Obama
...more
