How did Reagan Democrats vote post Reagan?

[Rockefeller GOP]

Straight-ticket R for the most part. The Reagan Democrats weren't the people that the media refers to as Reagan Democrats. They were in fact mostly Dixiecrats who voted for Reagan, but continued to register as Democrats and vote for Dixiecrats at the local level into the 90s and 2000s.

Hasn't this forum pointed out several times that the "real" Reagan Democrats were White ethnic workers in the North?  I mean Reagan BARELY won the South in 1980, and looking at the county results, his strength came overwhelmingly from the emerging GOP suburbs and urban areas.  Carter won the rural South.

Yes, he crushed Mondale in the South in '84, but he crushed him everywhere else that year, too...

[Rockefeller GOP]

Take a look at the 1984 county map of Southwest PA. Mondale won almost all those counties that have been trending heavily Republican post 2000.

Mondale was the pro labor traditional New Deal type of Democrat working class whites could identify with. Mondale was seen as a Liberal but not of the 'acid, amnesty, abortion' type like McGovern was. At least in western PA, working class whites seem to have stuck with the Democrats that year. The 1980's were also a time of drastic changes and the rapid deindustrialization of America. Factories were closing and laying off workers left and right and this was the beginning of the end of the Rust Belt.

Exactly.  Reagan Democrat =/= Dixiecrat.

Looking at 1980 and 1984 county results, it's pretty obvious that your classic Dixiecrat voted for Carter in 1980 (Reagan lost all the rural counties in the South and barely gained his margin of victory from dominating the metro areas) and then abandoned the Democrats for Reagan in 1984 (but who didn't vote for Reagan in '84?).  Conversely (and ironically), as you pointed out, Mondale still won a lot of "Reagan Democrat" areas.