Will the GOP's Control of the South be a Major Factor in 2016 Races?

The defeat Saturday of Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu was essentially the final act in the Republican Party’s control this fall of the South -- a transition expected to have a significant impact on the 2016 White House races.

The victory by Republican challenger and Louisiana Rep. Bill Cassidy means that Democrats in January will be left without a single U.S. senator or governor across nine states -- stretching from the Carolinas to Texas.

FILE: Nov. 19, 2014: Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, D, walks 
through a corridor on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. (AP)

And GOP runoff victories Saturday in two Louisiana House districts ensure the party of at least 246 seats, the largest Republican advantage since the Truman administration after World War II.

Furthermore, Republicans in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas will control nearly every majority-white congressional district and both state legislative chambers.

But will the conservative-leaning voters who appeared this year to have written a closing chapter for the white Southern Democrat have the same impact on the 2016 presidential races?

"The Republican presidential nomination will run through the South," says Ferrell Guillory, a Southern politics expert based at the University of North Carolina. "As Mitt Romney found (in 2012), that...makes it harder to build a national coalition once you are the nominee."

Democrats on Sunday argued that the GOP’s control of the South is not an insurmountable problem for Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren or any other liberal member of their party who makes a 2016 presidential run.

“Right now, there are really two electorates -- the midterm and the presidential. It’s a different math,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Michael Czin told FoxNews.com, pointing out that voter-turnout within his party is expected to be significantly higher in 2016.

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