1964 Presidential Election and the beginnings of the Southern Strategy

The 1964 electoral map is insane. Barry Goldwater was annihilated only winning his home state of Arizona and the Deep South. Goldwater had been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. What makes this election historically important is that this is when the Republican Party realized that it could win the South by being racist. Areas outside of the South had become too competitive as the Democratic Party ceased being a regional party with little northern support.

During this time period, the South was staunchly Democratic. LBJ was a racist southerner and Democrat, but he lost the Deep South. Why? LBJ wanted to go down in history for ending Jim Crow, and Goldwater campaigned on the states' rights to terrorize Black people. By today's standards, McGovern would be a liberal Republican. He was progressive on many issues, and he voted for previous civil rights acts, but he voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. LBJ accurately predicted that he would cause the Democratic Party to permanently lose the South.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_United_States_presidential_election

 

IIRC, LBJ thought the Democrats might lose the next few elections in the South because of the Civil Rights act but believed that they would eventually come back to the Democratic party.

He underestimated the long term impact. Even my racists parents switched from Democrat to Republican. The last sorta Democrat that they voted for for President I think was George Wallace.

 

You're probably right. He said they lost the South for a generation. It's been three or four generations. There has been a reversal in the Great Migration. A slim majority of Black people are in the South again, and we now have the freedom to vote, not accounting for current Republican efforts to suppress Black and Latino votes. This spells trouble for Georgia and maybe even Texas in the near future.

 

When I lived in LA, after Rdney King riots.
Many peopoe who where not racist, became racist.
Leadership on all levels put a lot of work to fight racism, it was a mixed success.