2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Hillary reminds the Bernie folks that he wasn't a Democrat until now, and they don't like it. [View all]rpannier
(24,328 posts)I would argue that the south began to rethink its allegiance to the Democratic Party in 1948 when their delegates walked out of the convention after Humphrey submitted a Minority Report wanting Civil Rights added to the Party platform. It passed, even with President Truman opposing it. The delegations from the South walked out, the States' Rights candidate took 4 southern states. According to the American Presidency Project out of the 214,980 votes cast in Alabama Thurmond took 171,443 votes (97.4%), Dewey got 40,930 and Truman was barely noticeable.
It is true that in '52 much of the South voted for the Democratic nominee, though Tennessee, Florida, Virginia and Texas all liked Ike both times.
In '60 Mississippi began its march away from the Democratic Party by voting majority the other Democratic Party ticket of Byrd/Thurmond. Byrd also received 6 delegate votes from Alabama and 1 in Oklahoma even though Kennedy won Alabama and Oklahoma went for Nixon
By '64 the core of the South (Alabama, Georgia, SC, LA, Miss) voted Republican, while Tennessee jumped back to the Party.
The rest is history.
The 60's could be easily argued as the tipping point. But, I would argue that the late 40's, with '48 being the point where the ball got rolling, is when we began to lose the South
'48 also saw extremely high turn outs of African Americans in major cities in states like Illinois and Ohio that tipped the scales toward Truman