Although never constituting a majority in either chamber of Congress, the South's representatives have shown remarkable prowess in blocking liberal legislation. This reality was central to Key's conceptualization of a conservative coalition in 1949 and to Congressional Quarterly's development of a conservative coalition index in 1957. Since these events, the South stopped sending a homogenous delegation of white male Democrats to Congress. Due to the inclusion of Republicans and minorities in the South's congressional delegation, a re‐examination of the way we learn about the region's legislative influence is needed. In this paper we propose two variations of CQ's model that allow us to more accurately explore the longitudinal influence of the South in Congres