zlacker

That makes literally no sense. Republicans supported the civil rights acts of 1957 through 1968 with supermajorities, by far larger margins than democrats did. How can it be that "due to the civil rights movement," "less civil minded" people switched from a party that voted for the Civil Rights Acts, to the party that voted for the Civil Rights Acts by even larger margins?

The realignment of southern democrats is due more to the fact that, once segregation--which democrats tolerated and republicans didn't--was off the table, they were more aligned with republicans on other issues, such as religion, gun control, abortion, business regulation, taxes, etc.

>>rayine+(OP)
You are either willfully cherry-picking facts here or being ignorant. This info is widely available and it was the racists south that was against the civil rights movement and the union states pushed it through. When the 64 law passed the DNC had 21 out of 22 confederate senators, 1 of whom voted for the act. GOP had 1 southern senator, who voted against it.

Looking at the union numbers, DNC had 46 senators of whom 45 voted for the act while the GOP had 32 of which 27 voted for it. So in union numbers the DNC senators voted 98% for it, while GOP did so with 84%.

Here is a longer article with this information: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/republ...

As a result of this both parties changed. The DNC took a stand for civil rights and the southern democrats left. At the same time the GOP got a lot new members that influenced the party and created the new power base for it. Later GOP close victories all relied on the previous southern democrats.

Bigger picture, it is clear that the party depending on the south needs to cater to a voting base that is not very positive to civil rights movement, and the opposite for a party that wants to hold the north. It is important to understand that the DNC took a stand here that lost them the south long term because it was the right thing to do (in their minds).

>>kmonse+47
So your theory is that "racists" left the DNC because it "took a stand for civil rights" and decamped to the party that had taken a stronger stand for civil rights for the 100 years preceding that? How does that make sense?

You are also not really correct in claiming that "later GOP close victories all relied on the previous southern democrats." The 1976 Carter-Ford election was pretty close, with Carter winning by 2% overall. In North Carolina, Carter won by 10 points, while he won New York by less than 5 points. Regan won North Carolina by 2 points and New York by 3 points 1980.

It's no doubt that Republicans gained a decisive advantage in the south eventually, but that happened decades later.