Was there still some vestige of the New Deal Coalition in 1996?

[buritobr]

The New Deal Coalition included blacks (80%), the majority of the hispanic, jews, catholic (hispanic and non-hispanic) and white working class in the north and in the south. The last election of the New Deal Coalition was 1976.
The new Democratic Coaltion includes blacks (90%), the majority of the hispanic (now, a bigger % of the US population), jews, asians, single women and educated whites.
This is the coalition which elected Obama. This is the coalition which elected Bill Clinton too. However, it looks like that the transiton in the Clinton era was not completed yet.
In 1996, Clinton won states in the Appalachia (Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia), counties in the west of Pennsylvania. His margin in the states in the Lakes (Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan) was bigger than the margin in the Pacific Coast. Clinton did not as well in some suburbs as Obama did. Clinton won Vermont, but his margin there was smaller than the margin in traditional Democratic states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

[Nym90]

Yes, there is quite a bit of truth to that. The "death" of the New Deal coalition took quite a while, and the 1990's were a transitionary period in this realignment.

Clinton actually did better with seniors than any other age group in 1996, made more surprising by the fact that of course Dole was a member of the WW2 generation while Clinton was a baby boomer 22 years his junior.

Clinton had a lot of personal appeal to rural areas as "one of them" in a way that his opponents (Bush 41 in particular, and to a lesser degree Dole as a long time creature of Washington) were not.

Voters who remembered the New Deal and had voted for FDR were still quite common in 1992/1996. They are nearly all dead now.

Likewise suburbs were still fairly Republican. They started moving to the Dems in the 1990's in earnest but overall remained mostly GOP. This helps to explain why Dole won states such as Virginia and Colorado.

[SingingAnalyst]

Yes, considering that Clinton carried poor, white, rural Arkansas and WV easily in 1996, and even won back Macomb, MI, which at that time was very predominantly white. (It is less so today).

[buritobr]

Clinton was the last Democratic to win a lot of counties in Texas outside the Hispanic South and the big cities. Gore won two of these counties (counties where the black population was not zero). Kerry and Obama won zero of these counties. If Clinton 1996 had the same vote of Obama 2008 in Harris and Dallas, he would win Texas.
The map of the counties in 1996 was the last one to have a red land area (in Dave Leips's map) or a big blue land area (in other maps) outside New England. After that, there was a big red land area (Dave Leips's map) in New England and some red points in places where the population density is high. The only exception was Obama 2008 in the Great Lakes.