I'm not saying that Oldiesfreak is right or anything, but:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/09/misunderstanding_the_southern_realignment_107084.htmlthere is a bit of evidence (and I'm not just pulling this from this article, I've made some similar observations in the past just off of this website's election results as well as studying up on the many factions in the late 19th-early 20th century Democratic and Republican Parties) to suggest that the whole Southern realignment thing wasn't based off of the race issue alone. Of particular note they do include the DW-Nominate score matrix, which I will admit freely to still not understanding though it does seem to match up with the New Deal changing how the means matched the ends (ie, the notion of state interventionism being "liberal" or "conservative"), at least on economics. Basically, men like John Garner were actually considered to be fairly "liberal" on economics pre-1932, but then rapidly got "conservative" as the details of the New Deal became more clear to traditionalists and business elites in the region. With the exception of 1928, significant Republican gains wouldn't be seen until the late 1940s, as urban areas (and thus commercial business interests) exploded in the region as well as an influx of middle-upper class Republican voting northern whites lured by said opportunities. As well, like I just mentioned, the all out advocacy of policies that empowered lower class whites and non-whites by the national party also encouraged some vote drift to the GOP. Most remarkable, and something that many seem to glaze over, is that it was under Eisenhower, the president who sent the National Guard to desegregate schools in Little Rock, that the GOP saw it's most impressive gains on the national level.
On the congressional and local levels, it wouldn't be until the Democratic leadership did away with the old "Seniority" system in the US Congress and most people who remembered Hoover died off that the old tribalistic zeal for Democratic id went down among many conservative Southerners. Of course this is not to say that race wasn't a factor (it most certainly was), but more to the point that it wasn't the only factor for the Republican drift.
But seriously, read the article.
