So the south became a republican stronghold about the time the democrats adopted civil rights into their party correct?
there were a number of factors in the switch and I doubt anyone will agree on one root cause. the beginnings of the neoconservative movement with goldwater most likely broke republicans of their inclination toward government spending (at least pertaining to social programs), and the nascent leftist neoliberal movement that took hold among democrats favored way more federal-level intervention in both social and fiscal matters than I think many in the south were comfortable with.
Of course if you look at actual spending by the parties the GOP rhetoric on fiscal matters ends up being bs. And while a root cause can be debated for the south turning republican, I think it would be hard to argue race didn't play a significant factor. This topic for example shows that.
it's also important to look at the fact that while nice little red/blue dichotomies make for tidy and convenient narratives when briefly glancing at the whole country, they're almost insulting oversimplifications when you're trying to understand the cultural nuances of a single state or even an entire region. sometimes, we have to speculate on such matters just to account for how the polarity of how entire regions voted flip-flopped in such a short span of time, but there's just way too much differentiation even within the same party within the same span of time to be able to lump
everyone into red=this, blue=that. not to mention that nowadays, when you look at actual voting records and campaign funding, there's next to no qualitative functional difference between the two big parties anyway.
