Editing Dixiecrat (section)

=== Legacy ===
The Dixiecrats are considered to have begun the weakening of the Democratic Solid South.<ref name=":1">{{Cite news |last=Cohn |first=Nate |date=2014-12-04 |title=Demise of the Southern Democrat Is Now Nearly Complete |language=en |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/upshot/demise-of-the-southern-democrat-is-now-nearly-compete.html |access-date=2023-08-21}}</ref>

Regardless of the power struggle within the Democratic Party concerning segregation policy, the South remained a strongly Democratic voting bloc for local, state, and federal Congressional elections, but increasingly not in presidential elections. Republican [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] won several Southern states in the [[1952 United States presidential election|1952]] and [[1956 United States presidential election|1956 presidential election]]s. In the 1956 election, former [[Commissioner of Internal Revenue]] [[T. Coleman Andrews]] received just under 0.2 percent of the popular vote running as the presidential nominee of the States' Rights Party.<ref name="uselectionatlas">{{cite web |title=1956 Presidential General Election Results |url=http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1956&minper=0&f=0&off=0&elect=0 |access-date=25 April 2023}}</ref> In the [[1960 United States presidential election|1960 presidential election]], Republican [[Richard Nixon]] won several Southern states, and Senator [[Harry F. Byrd]] of Virginia received the votes of several [[unpledged electors]] from Alabama and Mississippi. In the [[1964 United States presidential election|1964 presidential election]], Republican [[Barry Goldwater]] won all four states that Thurmond had carried in 1948. In the [[1968 United States presidential election|1968 presidential election]], Republican [[Richard Nixon]] or third-party candidate [[George Wallace]] won every former Confederate state except Texas. Thurmond eventually left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican Party in 1964, charging the Democrats with having "abandoned the people" and having repudiated the [[Constitution of the United States|U.S. Constitution]]; he subsequently worked on the [[Barry Goldwater 1964 presidential campaign|presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater]].<ref>{{Cite news |date=1964-09-17 |title=Thurmond Break is Made Official; He Will Work as Republican for Goldwater Election |language=en-US |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/09/17/archives/thurmond-break-is-made-official-he-will-work-as-republican-for.html |access-date= |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Within the next few decades, a realignment took place whereby most conservatives (economic, cultural, and racial conservatives included) migrated to the Republican Party, with liberals on the same issues going to the Democrats, resulting in more heterogenous national platforms. The Southern states subsequently shifted over time to voting mainly Republican, with the Northeast switching to voting mainly Democratic.

By the early 2010s, statistician and political analyst [[Nate Cohn]] wrote of the "demise of the Southern Democrat".<ref name=":1" />