There certainly was a shift, but it wasn't a full-blown party "switch".
Both sides engage in some revisionist history on this one.
You had your Strom Thurmonds (among others) who switched parties, but then you also had some democrats who remained democrats even after the Southern Strategy.
Robert Byrd (up until 2010)
J. William Fulbright (up until 1974)
John Little McClellan (up until 1977)
John McKeithen (up until 1972)
John C. Stennis (up until 1989)
B. Everett Jordan (up until 1973)
Russell B. Long (up until 1987)
The GOP embraced the Southern Strategy as just that, a strategy...they courted former segregationists in areas where they stood to gain a lot of votes, and for the others, they were content to let them keep being democrats.
There's no doubt that they (the GOP) were pandering to racists, I elaborated on that a lot in my previous post. My objection was simply to the notion that all of the segregationists immediately switched parties.
The Democrats during those decades "tolerated" plenty of racists in their party for the sake of getting votes.
The key difference was, the Democrats (while benefiting from those votes) made the concerted effort to stop actively pandering to them...as to where the GOP started using dog whistles to pander to them.
I agree that some Democratic leaders remained Democrats for awhile, but the change in the voters in even the first 10 years after the civil rights acts were past was indeed dramatic. Even among leaders, the change (as you can see from your list) was complete with the election of Reagan.
But you are correct. It is a bit difficult to see the massive change. The Nixon, Bush and Reagan landslides obscured the trend. Southern Democrats Carter and Clinton were able to win some key Southern states.
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