Yeah, the idea of a sudden swap is simplistic. The New Deal coalition included white Southerners and a substantial number of Black people and people who were otherwise prone to being sympathetic to Black civil rights. Certain dynamics protected the spot of Dixiecrats, but the contradictions were just too great for the party to hold together forever. It was a simple matter of absorbing the disaffected Dixiecrats.
I find it’s easier to explain this to people as “Southern conservatives used to vote Democrat, now they vote Republican”.
Yeah, the idea of a sudden swap is simplistic. The New Deal coalition included white Southerners and a substantial number of Black people and people who were otherwise prone to being sympathetic to Black civil rights. Certain dynamics protected the spot of Dixiecrats, but the contradictions were just too great for the party to hold together forever. It was a simple matter of absorbing the disaffected Dixiecrats.