Ok, so Georgia is different than Alabama, that’s obvious. Then again, Metro Atlanta tended to attract more Yankees than did the rest of the region. I still use this as evidence. Eisenhower narrowly lost our county in 1952, and I doubt this was due to Northerners, cause not many of them were here at that point. In 1956, he won the county. In 1960, Kennedy carried the county, because every Catholic voted for him and that offset the anti-Catholic votes. In 1968, Wallace got the biggest margin here since Thurmond was the official Democratic candidate, so what does that mean.
In general, I think using Wallace’s votes in certain states in 68 is a good gauge on, are they northerners are not, cause well, I just don’t think northern transplants supported him in large numbers. And actually, alot of the early activists in the GOP here, had been members of the bolt in ‘48.
I’m just saying there are a lot of nuances and complexities that aren’t entirely clear-cut. The liberal vs. Conservative doesn’t exactly wash, either. There were a lot of liberal Dem pols in the South (Big Gov’t liberals, at least). In MS, you had the ultra-racist Theodore Bilbo, who was a very liberal New Dealer and was a crook, dying before the Senate was likely going to expel him for corruption (and a jail term).
In the case of Metro Atlanta, by the late 1960s, you had 2 Republicans, both Conservatives, who represented both the city of Atlanta, and suburban DeKalb County (those districts now send Black leftist moonbats) in Congress, supplanting the Country-Clubber Bo Callaway (who was the first federal Republican elected from GA since 1872) who represented a more east-central rural district along the AL border. The reason why the 2 Republicans were elected was because of the racial polarization of the districts and the fact they sent very liberal White Democrats prior to them. After those 2 were gone in the early ‘70s (one was defeated, the other lost in a Senate race), no Republican was elected again until Gingrich in 1978, who was considered a “liberal Rockefeller” Republican when he ran against the old segregationist Jim Flynt (Flynt just died this past weekend at 92). Gingrich was never able to beat Flynt, and had to wait until he retired when the Dems unwisely put up a liberal woman who made Newt the “Conservative” in the race.
AL’s GOP benefitted greatly from Goldwater’s candidacy, as it went from an all-8 Democrat majority to a 5-3 GOP majority (and that would be the last time they’d have a majority again until 1997). Interestingly, all 5 of those GOP pioneers are still alive today (one of them, Glenn Andrews, is now the second-oldest surviving member of Congress, at 98). Gov. Wallace, however, drastically curtailed the growth, and kept the GOP from making any gains for a long time (3 of the 5 Republicans that survived reelection in ‘66 were the only ones around until the ‘80s, and in the case of Bill Dickinson, ‘90s).
Also, interestingly, where some of the newly-minted Southern Republicans of the late ‘60s were generally reactionaries against the far-left hijacking of the Dems, you had stories such as in Birmingham where the old White racist Dem machine was brought down by Republicans like George Seibels, who forged a coalition with Blacks to win the Mayor’s office in 1967. Unfortunately, because Blacks became reactionaries themselves against the Republican party at the same time (despite the fact that they were clearly the pro-Civil Rights party), this coalition lasted only 8 years.