Realignments are not based on geography. Realignments are caused by strong leadership responses to crises at a time when one generation is ascending and the one in power is on its way out. There are many political scientists who theorize that America has only had 2 REAL realignments: 1860 and 1932. The rest were half assed realignments.
Without a crisis and a strong leader, you don't get a full realignment. You get a weak one. That's why it's so important that centrist trash like Biden, Booker, Harris, Cuomo, et all, doesn't get elected in 2020. These centre left technocratic hacks are failing everywhere in the world: their failing in Germany, Italy, UK, etc...
Again, realignments don't have to happen. If the wrong person gets elected or the crises is overwhelming enough then it just skips a generation
Yeah, exactly. The Reagan realignment did have geography play a large part, but you can't necessarily extrapolate that to other realignments.
What region was most important in the FDR realignment?
No one region really, except for
maybe the South. While FDR got a higher % of the vote in the South than any other Democrat, immediately after his presidency was the beginning of the end of Southern Democratic dominance (State's Rights Dixiecrats in 1948). Plus, the Democratic Party had been dominating the South long before FDR. So...no, not really.
Re-alignments are about bringing together several disparate groups into one large, common coalition that generally has the upper hand in the electorate. For the Reagan coalition, this was bringing together fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and neoconservatives, doing a great deal to associate social conservatism with fiscal conservatism and thus bringing the Sunbelt into the Republican column. For the New Deal coalition, this was bringing together urban liberals, Catholics, African-Americans, and Southerners; all groups that shared the common trait of economic hardship.
