Even in the early 20th century, Louisiana had a pocket of Republican strength centered about the sugar parishes west of New Orleans, where farmers favored the GOP's position on protective tariffs. According to "The Louisiana Elections of 1960", whose authors include the late Louisiana State University sociologist Perry H. Howard, from 1920, the year of the election of Warren G. Harding as U.S. President until 1956, the reelection of Dwight D. Eisenhower, "a number of parishes, many in close proximity, have consistently supported the Republican party at close to or significantly above the presidential Republican vote average. Apart from some of the urbanized parishes, the majority of these parishes are in south Louisiana; in fact, they form a cluster in the sugar cultivation area west of the Atchafalaya swamp and along Bayou Lafourche and the Mississippi River below Baton Rouge."."