Explain this Virginia 1968 Map

[mencken]

Are the Nixon counties (outside of NoVa) simply less culturally Southern than the Wallace counties, or is there some other cultural barrier at work?

[mencken]

Looking at the 1960 map, it appears that Nixon largely won the same areas in both elections, whereas Wallace won the white Kennedy areas. So, I guess a better way to frame my question is, what were the factors that made one a Republican in 1960s Virginia?

[RINO Tom]

Not an expert by any means, but it certainly looks like the main Republican areas are either suburban (NOVA, Richmond) or ancestrally Republican Appalachian counties?  Though, that stretch in Southwest VA would be the most Appalachian, and it is Democratic.  Either way, the former group would agree with many historians' assertions that GOP strength in Dixie emerged first in the growing suburbs of the Southern states ... also, while not a direct correlation and FAR from proof, this map certainly challenges the super overrated trope that Wallace voters would have been Nixon voters.

[Hydera]

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=51&year=1966&f=0&off=3

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=51&year=1965&f=0&off=5

Conservative anti civil rights protest candidates did well in the same area.


Plus it swung hard to Goldwater in 1964.

[kcguy]

Though, that stretch in Southwest VA would be the most Appalachian, and it is Democratic.

There are some coal counties in far western VA.  (Not sure which ones.)  I suspect those were union areas, and that's why they stuck with Humphrey in '68.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Check out this map of Slave population in 1860:
https://www.loc.gov/item/2010586922/

The Piedmont area of Virginia was defined historically by slavery and race, the mountains much less so.  Wallace did well in the Southern Piedmont of Virginia, winning those counties were enough blacks to scare the whites but not enough black voters to give Humphrey a win.   Shenandoah Valley & the Blue Ridge were generally the most Republican part of Virginia ever since the 1902 Constitution that disenfranchised blacks. These areas were German and 'Scots-Irish' in ancestry, as opposed to the more English whites of the Piedmont and Tidewater who had been traditionally been part of a society defined by greater hierarchy in terms of race and class.  In the 1920s-30s, coal country went in a different direction and trended more Democratic with the rise of labor unions.  The Nixon areas in the Northern Piedmont, in the Richmond area, and along the Bay - a lot of these historically Democratic counties went for Hoover in 1928, and then these areas went for Eisenhower and remained friendly to Republicans after that.  The expansion of the middle class has to do with some of this certainly as Rino Tom alluded to, though for some parts in the Bay at least I think that does not quite fit.