Why did Ford win big cities in the South?

[buritobr]

The results of the election of 1976 were weird. In the North, Carter won the big cities and Ford won the rural areas. In the South, the opposite happened. Carter won the rural areas and Ford won the big cities.

Carter won Chicago and Detroit, but it was not enough to win Illinois and Michigan. Carter won New York because he had a large margin in New York city and won Pennsylvania because he had a large margin in Philadelphia.

On the other side, Ford won the counties of Jefferson (Alabama), Hinds (Mississippi), Greenville (South Carolina), Dallas (Texas), Harris (Texas) and Jefferson (Kentucky). Most of the counties in the South were carried by Carter 1976 and McCain 2008, but some of these mentioned counties were carried by Ford 1976 and Obama 2008.

[CatoMinor]

This should answer your question better than a long post on changing demographics and and realignments.

[Old Man Willow]

I imagine racial politics played a bigger role in urban areas, but that's just my guess.

[Nichlemn]

My guess is that the cities had wealthy Republicans who these days live in ultra-red suburbs and exurbs. It look a lot longer to convert the Dixiecrats.

[TDAS04]

Rural Southern whites tended to hold on to their traditional Democratic loyalty longer than the more urban Southern whites, one reason being that the rural ones were more economically disadvantaged overall than their urban counterparts, and thus had more reason to support the more economically populist party.  Southern cities were also whiter back then than they are today.

1976 was not the first election where this pattern existed.  Kennedy generally outperformed Nixon in the South in 1960, but Nixon did very well in the urban ares, carrying such counties as Jefferson in Alabama, and Harris and Dallas in Texas (JFK got slaughtered quite brutally in Dallas by 25 points).

[Heimdal]

The urban areas in the South were probably the first places in the region that started voting Republican (except for ancestrally Republican areas like Eastern Tennessee and the Hill Country in Texas). A lot of industry appeared in the South during the 1940s and 1950s, and I guess this had a greater impact in urban areas than in rural areas. People were making more money, and were more likely to vote Republican because of this.

Another factor is that a lot of these urban voters weren’t Southerners. They were transplants from the Northeast or the Midwest. That meant that they didn’t have the ancestral link to the Democratic Party that a lot of Southerners had.

So these areas were well on their way to the Republican coalition already in the 1950s. It would take several more decades for the rural Southern whites to consistently vote Reoublican.

[GaussLaw]

My guess is that the cities had wealthy Republicans who these days live in ultra-red suburbs and exurbs. It look a lot longer to convert the Dixiecrats.

DUH!

Urban Republicans have been moving to ruby red exurbs and suburbs in the past decades, hence a lot of the shifts in places like Indianapolis.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Also, the South had a lot of rural blacks.

[Sol]

It should also be noted that many southern counties have large swaths of suburbia- Carter was likely winning the inner city while losing the 'burbs.

[buritobr]

It should also be noted that many southern counties have large swaths of suburbia- Carter was likely winning the inner city while losing the 'burbs.

Sure

I don't know 1976, but considering 2010 numbers

Population

Hinds: 245,285        Jackson: 175.437
Jefferson (Alabama): 659,479         Birmingham: 212,113
Greenville County: 474,266      Greenville (City): 61,397
Dallas County: 2,368,139         Dallas (City): 1,241,162
Harris: 4,336,853               Houston: 2,160,821