That seems rather arbitrary, the Confederate states were won by your "Northern" winner in 1868, 1872, 1956, 1968 (a plurality of EVs), 1972, 1980, as well as 1928 if you consider Oklahoma to be a Confederate state (Indian and Oklahoma territories fought with the Confederacy). Your "Southern" winners would still have won without the Confederate states in 1892, 1912, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, 1948, 1960, 1964, 1984, and 1988. And how is Reagan "Northern" in 1980 and "Southern" in 1984, while Nixon isn't in '68/'72?Not all Old Confederacy states were won by Ulysses Grant. But Grant winning states from the Old Confederacy is representative of the Republicans back then and the Democrats right now. That is, when winning the presidency, the Republicans Then/Democrats Now have been able to carry select states from the Old Confederacy. Compare that to the Democrats Then/Republicans Now, and they win all of the Old Confederacy states with presidential elections in the party prevails. Right now's Democratic Blue Firewall was back then's Republican Red Firewall. A huge electoral advantage that reduces the party, with its base states in the Old Confederacy, to have to thin the needle to stitch together victory in the Electoral College. (This is also example why I don't buy into imaginative notions, here, about Pennsylvania on the verge of flipping to the Republicans.)
By the way: I was not mentioning the home state of any given presidential candidate. I'm referring, much, to the base states of the two major parties. That it used to be that the South was for the Democrats and the North for the Republicans; of course, we recognize the opposite for today.
When Ronald Reagan unseated Jimmy Carter, in 1980, much of the south performed with margins less than his popular-vote spread of R+9.75. Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee were examples of state margins which were less than his national number. (The opposite happened for Reagan's re-election in 1984.) By contrast, Reagan carried his home state of California along with the likes of New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Washington by margins which exceeded his national number of 1980.
When Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984, over Walter Mondale, ten of the eleven states of the Old Confederacy produced margins which exceeded his national R+18.22. The only exception was Tennessee, which has been noted at this site as a margin of R+16.27.
In 1988, George Bush's carriage of all eleven states in the Old Confederacy yielded margins which exceeded his national R+7.73. (Louisiana, the state which hosted that year's Republican convention, was his lowest: R+10.21. Tenn., in 1988, turned out to be the only state which shifted Republican in 1988. And Michael Dukakis's pickup states were reminiscent of 40 years earlier with losing Republican Thomas Dewey: Not one of them were among the Old Confederacy.)
In 1984, Calif. and Wash. scaled back their margins; so Reagan underperformed in those state relative his national outcome. So, I could delay the listing by one cycle and give the North 24, not 23, of those winning cycles. And I could give the South 16, not 17, of those prevailing cycles. (That would make it 60 percent for the North and 40 percent for the South.)
My point is that, if we were to use this as an exercise with pitting these two regions against each other, it would still be undeniable that more presidential victories have come from the [base states of the] North than the South. This is a huge problem for today's Republican Party.
