Coalitions today had Nixon won 1960 and push through CRA and VRA?

[David Hume]

Say Nixon won in 1960, which is very possible had he campaigned more efficiently. He pushed through a slightly moderate version of CRA an VRA, despite the objection of the Southern Dems. He still nominated strict constructionist like Warren Burger and support tough on crime policies. What would be the coalitions today?

It's very likely that the Rockefeller Republican still very influential, and the Southern Dems still Dems. In general Republicans would be more in the middle of the political spectrum, while the two ends are Northern liberal Dems and Southern Dems. Abortion would still be hotly debated, but not as partisan.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Racially I guess it depends on whether and when the 1965 immigration act happens, and how partisan support for this and future immigration laws break down.

Urban-rural and educational realignment probably still happen, as I'm guessing that social and technological progress (e.g. automation) eventually make the Northern liberal wing of the Dems the dominant wing of the party.

In general Republicans would be more in the middle of the political spectrum, while the two ends are Northern liberal Dems and Southern Dems. Abortion would still be hotly debated, but not as partisan.

This doesn't sound too different from 21st-century Dems being the party of the well-off and the poor while 21st-century R's do better with middle income voters/households.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The realignment of the low country South to the GOP still happens. Race was a catalyst for this to occur, but at the end of the day they just were not a good fit for the Democratic Party and had merely been tacked onto the Dem coalition because of Civil War era political divides. This happens more slowly probably, but at the end of the day economic growth and development of the suburbs and the creation of a large number of white collar and middle class voting base makes the continuation of the Solid South impossible, so Conservative Low country drifts towards the Republicans.

Without the Dems getting credit for the CRA though, Republicans keep better numbers with African-Americans though Democrats still dominate among them, meanwhile Democrats maintain a tighter hold over the poorer up-country South.

The major overlooked shift in the 1960s is the shift that happened within the North itself and the trading of upscale WASPs for middle class Irish, Italians and Germans. The seeds of this shift were planted in the 30s and 40s and the first signs of it were with the election of 1940, so this arguably continues. Nixon-Kennedy temporarily reverses these trends but with Kennedy out of the picture, this realignment possibly accelerates. The liberalization of rural Yankee whites and their estrangement from the GOP is another legacy of the impact of the New Deal, academia and the growth in power of their demographic rivals within the GOP. This might slow or accelerate depending on various factors.

The bottom line is that the CRA was just one of many factors in an ongoing realignment (contrary to the more extreme party flip theorists who assert that the world began in 1964) that commenced with the New Deal, and simply changing who does it and how that effects things doesn't impact the other factors necessarily and thus its difficult to assess the impact without knowledge of how those other factors play out. 

[Libertas Vel Mors]

Probably basically the same. Southern realignment had specific elections (1964, some congressional elections in 64 and 66) in which race was a big issue, but it wasn't primarily or even significantly race driven. Republican gains in the South stuck with Eisenhower when he was pro civil rights as President (in fact, they expanded on a absolute basis 56 and on a relative basis in 1960) and it's unlikely that they would have not also stuck with Nixon had he done the same.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

The 1960 election trend map is actually a great example of this, especially when combined with the



1952 trend map mins Thurmond 48's banner states (SC, GA, AL, MS, and LA)



the 1948 swing map



and the 1944 swing map



as well as graphs of GOP vote share from specific states, like Alabama, where the Dem vote share fell in every election from 1940 to 1960

In fact, this is a bit of a broader point, but portrayals of Dems losing Southern voters because of the 1964 Civil Rights Act miss that the truth is almost entirely the opposite: Dems passed the 64 CRA because they were already losing Southern voters, and needed to look elsewhere for support.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The South voted for non-major party candidates on multiple occasions between 1948 and 1968. Rather than realignment towards either Republicans or Democrats, there's every chance you instead get a distinctive Southern party, especially if it could absorb upscale Republican voters in those states in the same way as the Republicans absorbed reactionary Democrats in our timeline.

[patzer]

The long term trends determine in part in who the Democratic nominee in the next few elections is. If it's a Northern liberal, white southern Dems will either go R or third party.

On the other hand if the 1964 presidential race is Nixon vs Thurmond or something, and this sort of thing persists, the Democratic party might take a very different course. While it's significantly less likely, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a realignment resulting in something similar to today's political coalitions but in the opposite direction.

e.g.
Richard Nixon (R) 1960-68
George Wallace (D) 1968-76
Hiram Fong (R) 1976-80
Ronald Reagan (D) 1980-88
Ralph Hall (D) 1988-92
Joe Biden (R) 1992-2000
Richard Shelby (D) 2000-08
Barack Obama (R) 2008-16
Donald Trump (D) 2016-

[Sol]

The South voted for non-major party candidates on multiple occasions between 1948 and 1968. Rather than realignment towards either Republicans or Democrats, there's every chance you instead get a distinctive Southern party, especially if it could absorb upscale Republican voters in those states in the same way as the Republicans absorbed reactionary Democrats in our timeline.

The trouble with this is that upscale Republican voters in Southern states weren't ideal fits for a right wing Southern southern party, especially in places which were more economically prosperous and had transplants. Nixon won places like DeKalb, Cobb, Lexington, Fort Bend, Mecklenburg, etc. over Wallace. NASA engineers and bankers in the South were pretty racist but the more overt populist stuff had a weaker appeal there, in much the same way that the descendants of these people only abandoned the GOP when someone like Trump came to the fore.

As an aside, does anyone know why Davidson County TN voted for Wallace? Obviously a narrow thing and the result of a three-way split, but it's basically the only fast-growing sunbelt urban county in the South to vote for him (barring Duval, which makes more sense).

[David Hume]

Racially I guess it depends on whether and when the 1965 immigration act happens, and how partisan support for this and future immigration laws break down.

Urban-rural and educational realignment probably still happen, as I'm guessing that social and technological progress (e.g. automation) eventually make the Northern liberal wing of the Dems the dominant wing of the party.

In general Republicans would be more in the middle of the political spectrum, while the two ends are Northern liberal Dems and Southern Dems. Abortion would still be hotly debated, but not as partisan.

This doesn't sound too different from 21st-century Dems being the party of the well-off and the poor while 21st-century R's do better with middle income voters/households.

Yet the difference would be the polarization. Had the southern religious conservative been out of the GOP, either remaining in D camp or establishing a third party, the GOP would be much more moderate, with a much stronger libertarian wing.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The 1960 election trend map is actually a great example of this, especially when combined with the



1952 trend map mins Thurmond 48's banner states (SC, GA, AL, MS, and LA)



the 1948 swing map



and the 1944 swing map



as well as graphs of GOP vote share from specific states, like Alabama, where the Dem vote share fell in every election from 1940 to 1960

In fact, this is a bit of a broader point, but portrayals of Dems losing Southern voters because of the 1964 Civil Rights Act miss that the truth is almost entirely the opposite: Dems passed the 64 CRA because they were already losing Southern voters, and needed to look elsewhere for support.

I generally agree with this analysis.

Its also the same for the Republicans, who looked to the South, because post 1932 were losing ground in the heavily unionized and industrial states.