There is this common idea that the GOP used to be a liberal party and the Democrats were conservatives up until some time in the 60s, that may have been true on the local and state level (I’m from Louisiana, my whole family and I are quite conservative and until the mid-2000s they were all registered Democrats who voted a straight blue ticket on everything but the presidential election) but by the 50s the national Dems were a very liberal party dominated by progressives yankees who strongly supported civil rights, opposed HUAC and preferred a more dovish approach to the Soviets, pretty diametrically opposed to the social values of the South, so why is it that in 52, 56 and 60 the South went so solidly for the Democratic candidate?
I know that some of it might have been force of habit, my grandpa’s first election was 1964 when he was 19, he told me that he preferred Goldwater but voted for Johnson because he couldn’t bring himself to vote for a Republican, especially a Republican from outside of the South, against a Democrat from Texas, but it can’t be that huge majorities of voters in the South went Democrat out of a sense of party loyalty regardless of the candidate, especially since the 52, 56 and 60 candidates were yankees. So how did Stevenson and Kennedy relate to Southern voters and get them to vote for them? Interestingly, Kennedy won by much slimmer margins than Stevenson in the South, but I don’t know if that was because he was a Catholic or because of his platform.
I understand that in all 3 of those elections the GOP candidates were essentially liberals so neither of them represented the Southern zeitgeist, but Stevenson and Kennedy were evidently more opposed to the politics of the South at that time than Eisenhower and Nixon were.
First off for most of American history the south voted democrat. This was because it was the party of small government and keeping the status quo which the South's slave based economy benefited a great deal from. It was also traditionally the party of pro southern ideals because of those same reasons. Well that's great but how did it flip? During the gilded age between 1870-1900 the south had seen political figures like William Jennings Bryan who supported unions and more pro-worker legislation to help poor southern sharecroppers who would gain much from federal support. This shaped the foundations of a new democratic party. By the early 1890s the progressive movement began to take hold of both parties who's political leaders would see to use the government to enact real change. This change made the democratic party more worker friendly along with major leaders such as Teddy Roosevelt began switching over to the democratic party by the end of the first world war. By the 1920s the democratic party began to become more pro government and pro federal programs which benefited many poor southerners as republicans began to become more pro business(but not quite yet more conservative). By the time Franklin D. Roosevelt's New deal came along with its new federal programs like social security and welfare, the democratic party had become the party of the worker and pro big government regulation but still the party of the south. Fast forward to Kennedy. He was an interesting character and had done quite a bit to secure the 1960 election against Nixon even by a slim margin. It was the first election to have a televised presidential debate which gave Kennedy an edge. Nixon was clammy, sinister and old looking while Kennedy appeared young, tanned, handsome and youthful by comparison. Those who were polled on who they thought won the debate polled that Kennedy won meanwhile those who only heard the debate on radio claimed Nixon won. Kennedy also supported the release of Martin Luther King jr. from a Georgia jail for trespassing in an all white dinner. This helped win him the black vote(who normally voted republican as it was the party of Lincoln). By now the south had traditionally voted democrat and while not siding along kennedy's politics on segregation(which he kept to himself), they did like his charisma, youth and his assurances that the separation of Church and state would make sure the pope had no say in American government due to his Catholic beliefs. Alright so how did the democratic party become liberal and republicans conservative? Fast forward again to 1964. By this point Kennedy had been assassinated in 1963 thus putting Lyndon B. Johnson into the presidency. The civil rights era was in full swing with the brutality of segregation being televised across the world. Unrelated fun fact: Bob Dylan's 'the times are a changin' came out at the beginning of '64 which was inspired by his march in washington with MLK in '63. So by the end of 1964 two major things happened: The civil rights act was passed which ended segregation and the Vietnam conflict began with the attack against US naval vessels by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. The civil rights act was the last straw for the conservative south and slowly began starting to vote republican from then on, it also didn't help that Johnson would not pull out of Vietnam after it was discovered in 1967 from the pentagon papers that the US attacked the North Vietnamese first in the gulf of Tonkin thus putting the reason for increased fighting in Vietnam on very shaky ground. Johnson was adamant not to be the first president to lose a war which put more and more American lives at risk with the addition of the draft in 1965. By the time the 1968 presidential election came, the south was starting to lean pretty pro republican as Nixon(who was the republican candidate) promised an end to the war in Vietnam and a return to conservative ideals. As time went on, more and more of the south began to vote for republican candidates which began to be the party of the south and the conservative ideals as we know it today.