paragraph_text: Democrats were elected to the legislature and governor's office, but the Populists attracted voters displeased with them. In 1896 a biracial, Populist-Republican Fusionist coalition gained the governor's office. The Democrats regained control of the legislature in 1896 and passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. Voters of North Carolina's 2nd congressional district elected a total of four African-American congressmen through these years of the late 19th century.

paragraph_text: In 2001, Fuller, Cowell, and TV producer Simon Jones attempted to sell the Pop Idol format to the United States, but the idea was met with poor response from United States television networks. However, Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox's parent company, was persuaded to buy the show by his daughter Elisabeth, who was a fan of the British show. The show was renamed American Idol: The Search for a Superstar and debuted in the summer of 2002. Cowell was initially offered the job as showrunner but refused; Lythgoe then took over that position. Much to Cowell's surprise, it became one of the hit shows for the summer that year. The show, with the personal engagement of the viewers with the contestants through voting, and the presence of the acid-tongued Cowell as a judge, grew into a phenomenon. By 2004, it had become the most-watched show in the U.S., a position it then held on for seven consecutive seasons.

paragraph_text: In a reversal of alignments, since the late 1960s the Republican Party has grown more prominent within the state based on an influx of primarily white voters (the majority in the state) from the Democratic Party. By the mid-1990s, it became the state's dominant political party.

paragraph_text: The American Revolution led to the creation of a new Constitution of the United States in 1787. with a national legislature based partly on direct elections of representatives every two years, and thus responsible to the electorate for continuance in office. Senators were not directly elected by the people until the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. Women, men who owned no property, and blacks, and others not originally given voting rights in most states eventually gained the vote through changes in state and federal law in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Until it was repealed by the Fourteenth Amendment following the Civil War, the Three - Fifths Compromise gave a disproportionate representation of slave states in the House of Representatives relative to the voters in free states,

paragraph_text: The 26th Amendment (passed and ratified in 1971) prevents states from setting a voting age higher than 18. Except for the express limitations provided for in Amendments XIV, XV, XIX and XXVI, voter qualifications for House and Senate elections are largely delegated to the States under Article I, Section 2 and Amendment XVII of the United States Constitution, which respectively state that ``The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. ''and`` The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.''

paragraph_text: Olin DeWitt Talmadge Johnston (November 18, 1896April 18, 1965) was a Democratic Party politician from the US state of South Carolina. He served as the 98th Governor of South Carolina, 1935–1939 and 1943–1945, and represented the state in the United States Senate from 1945 until his death from pneumonia in Columbia, South Carolina in 1965.

paragraph_text: Since the show's inception in 2002, ten of the fourteen Idol winners, including its first five, have come from the Southern United States. A large number of other notable finalists during the series' run have also hailed from the American South, including Clay Aiken, Kellie Pickler, and Chris Daughtry, who are all from North Carolina. In 2012, an analysis of the 131 contestants who have appeared in the finals of all seasons of the show up to that point found that 48% have some connection to the Southern United States.

paragraph_text: In 1899 the state legislature passed a new constitution, with requirements for poll taxes and literacy tests for voter registration which disfranchised most black Americans in the state. Exclusion from voting had wide effects: it meant that black Americans could not serve on juries or in any local office. After a decade of white supremacy, many people forgot that North Carolina had ever had thriving middle-class black Americans. Black citizens had no political voice in the state until after the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed to enforce their constitutional rights. It was not until 1992 that another African American was elected as a US Representative from North Carolina.

paragraph_text: The enormous success of the show and the revenue it generated was transformative for Fox Broadcasting Company. American Idol and fellow competing shows Survivor and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire were altogether credited for expanding reality television programming in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, and Idol became the most watched non-scripted primetime television series for almost a decade, from 2003 to 2012, breaking records on U.S. television (dominated by drama shows and sitcoms in the preceding decades).

paragraph_text: The two finalists were Kris Allen and Adam Lambert, both of whom had previously landed in the bottom three at the top five. Allen won the contest in the most controversial voting result since season two. It was claimed, later retracted, that 38 million of the 100 million votes cast on the night came from Allen's home state of Arkansas alone, and that AT&T employees unfairly influenced the votes by giving lessons on power-texting at viewing parties in Arkansas.

paragraph_text: The eighth season of American Idol premiered on January 13, 2009, and concluded on May 20, 2009. Judges Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson continued to judge the show's contestants, along with Ryan Seacrest as host. The season introduced Kara DioGuardi as the fourth judge on the Idol panel. It was also Abdul's final season as a judge. Kris Allen, a native of Conway, Arkansas, was announced the winner of the competition on May 20, 2009, defeating runner - up Adam Lambert after nearly 100 million votes. This was the second season where both of the final two contestants had been in the bottom three or two at least once before the finale, with the first being season three.

paragraph_text: The Rajya Sabha (meaning the ``Council of States '') is the upper house of the Parliament of India. Karnataka elects 12 seats and they are indirectly elected by the state legislators of Karnataka. The number of seats allocated to the party are determined by the number of seats a party possesses during nomination, and the party nominates a member to be voted on. Elections within the state legislatures are held using Single transferable vote with proportional representation.

paragraph_text: The 26th Amendment (passed and ratified in 1971) set the voting age for federal and state elections at 18 years, but does not prevent states from establishing a lower voting age. Except for the express limitations provided for in Amendments XIV, XV, XIX and XXVI, voter qualifications for House and Senate elections are largely delegated to the States under Article I, Section 2 and Amendment XVII of the United States Constitution, which respectively state that ``The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. ''and`` The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.''

paragraph_text: Theories given for the success of Southerners on Idol have been: more versatility with musical genres, as the Southern U.S. is home to several music genre scenes; not having as many opportunities to break into the pop music business; text-voting due to the South having the highest percentage of cell-phone only households; and the strong heritage of music and singing, which is notable in the Bible Belt, where it is in church that many people get their start in public singing. Others also suggest that the Southern character of these contestants appeal to the South, as well as local pride. According to season five winner Taylor Hicks, who is from the state of Alabama, "People in the South have a lot of pride ... So, they're adamant about supporting the contestants who do well from their state or region."

paragraph_text: Despite being eliminated earlier in the season, Chris Daughtry (as lead of the band Daughtry) became the most successful recording artist from this season. Other contestants, such as Hicks, McPhee, Bucky Covington, Mandisa, Kellie Pickler, and Elliott Yamin have had varying levels of success.

paragraph_text: During Reconstruction, freedmen and former free people of color were granted the right to vote; most joined the Republican Party. Numerous African Americans were elected to local offices, and some to state office. Following Reconstruction, Tennessee continued to have competitive party politics. But in the 1880s, the white-dominated state government passed four laws, the last of which imposed a poll tax requirement for voter registration. These served to disenfranchise most African Americans, and their power in the Republican Party, the state, and cities where they had significant population was markedly reduced. In 1900 African Americans comprised 23.8 percent of the state's population, concentrated in Middle and West Tennessee. In the early 1900s, the state legislature approved a form of commission government for cities based on at-large voting for a few positions on a Board of Commission; several adopted this as another means to limit African-American political participation. In 1913 the state legislature enacted a bill enabling cities to adopt this structure without legislative approval.

paragraph_text: The show itself is popular in the Southern United States, with households in the Southeastern United States 10% more likely to watch American Idol during the eighth season in 2009, and those in the East Central region, such as Kentucky, were 16 percent more likely to tune into the series. Data from Nielsen SoundScan, a music-sales tracking service, showed that of the 47 million CDs sold by Idol contestants through January 2010, 85 percent were by contestants with ties to the American South.

paragraph_text: With the exception of seasons one and two, the contestants in the semifinals onwards perform in front of a studio audience. They perform with a full band in the finals. From season four to season nine, the American Idol band was led by Rickey Minor; from season ten onwards, Ray Chew. Assistance may also be given by vocal coaches and song arrangers, such as Michael Orland and Debra Byrd to contestants behind the scene. Starting with season seven, contestants may perform with a musical instrument from the Hollywood rounds onwards. In the first nine seasons, performances were usually aired live on Tuesday nights, followed by the results shows on Wednesdays in the United States and Canada, but moved to Wednesdays and Thursdays in season ten.

paragraph_text: Investment in the city continued. The William Enston Home, a planned community for the city's aged and infirm, was built in 1889. An elaborate public building, the United States Post Office and Courthouse, was completed by the federal government in 1896 in the heart of the city. The Democrat-dominated state legislature passed a new constitution in 1895 that disfranchised blacks, effectively excluding them entirely from the political process, a second-class status that was maintained for more than six decades in a state that was majority black until about 1930.

paragraph_text: North Carolina's party loyalties have undergone a series of important shifts in the last few years: While the 2010 midterms saw Tar Heel voters elect a bicameral Republican majority legislature for the first time in over a century, North Carolina has also become a Southern swing state in presidential races. Since Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter's comfortable victory in the state in 1976, the state had consistently leaned Republican in presidential elections until Democrat Barack Obama narrowly won the state in 2008. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton came within a point of winning the state in 1992 and also only narrowly lost the state in 1996. In the early 2000s, Republican George W. Bush easily won the state by over 12 points, but by 2008, demographic shifts, population growth, and increased liberalization in heavily populated areas such as the Research Triangle, Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, and Asheville, propelled Barack Obama to victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to win the state since 1976. In 2012, North Carolina was again considered a competitive swing state, with the Democrats even holding their 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, Republican Mitt Romney ultimately eked out a 2-point win in North Carolina, the only 2012 swing state that Obama lost, and one of only two states (along with Indiana) to flip from Obama in 2008 to the GOP in 2012.

Question: When did voters from the state the most successful American Idol contestant this season is from once again vote for someone from the party that dominated South Carolina's legislature?
Answer: 2008