The parties didn’t switch. But the left has done a remarkable job of convincing a lot of people that they did.
They point to Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” to secure the Democrat-leaning South in his 1968 and 1972 campaigns as the key events of the “switch.”
Reinforced when the television networks switched the colors of the Democrat and Republican (from red to blue and vice-versa) in their coverage of Presidential and Senatorial campaigns in 2000.
Both superficial and false “reasons” for the “switch.”
I always hear people say, Strom Thurmond changed from Democrat to Republican. He apparently is the poster boy for the alleged switch of parties from Democrat to Republican in the south.