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The generation-long political retreat of Democrats across the South is disintegrating into a rout.

President Bush dominated the South so completely in last month's presidential election that he carried nearly 85% of all the counties across the region ?- and more than 90% of counties where whites are a majority of the population, according to a Times analysis of election results and census data.

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In the Senate, Republicans have increased the number of seats they hold in the 13 Southern states from 18 before Bush took office to 22. (The GOP has now won the last 10 open-seat Senate races in the South.) In the House, Republicans have stretched their advantage in the Southern states from 27 seats before Bush took office to 40 today.

"This is a cumulative process that has gained critical momentum in the past four years," said Karl Rove, Bush's chief political advisor.

Analyzing the results at the county level illustrates Bush's dominance vividly.

In 2000, Bush won 1,047 counties across the South and held then-Vice President Al Gore to 294, according to Polidata.

This year, Bush won 1,124 counties and held Kerry to 216, according to Polidata figures based on preliminary election results. (The South had one fewer county this year than in 2000 because two jurisdictions merged in Virginia.)

Those numbers represent a catastrophic decline for the Democrats since the 1990s, when Clinton won more than 650 counties in each of his presidential victories. Bush has become the first candidate since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944 to carry more than 1,000 Southern counties twice.

Even those dramatic numbers may not express the full extent of the Democrats' erosion.

Kerry carried 126 Southern counties where racial minorities ?- primarily African Americans, but also Latinos in Texas ?- are a majority of the population, according to a Times analysis of census and Polidata figures. That's only slightly fewer than the 142 "majority-minority" counties Clinton won across the South in 1996.

But Kerry won fewer than one-fifth as many majority-white Southern counties as Clinton did. In all, Kerry carried fewer than 8% of Southern counties with a white majority. Kerry won only one majority-white county in each of Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi; in Texas he carried two of 196.