Editing Southern strategy (section)

==Introduction==
Although the phrase "Southern Strategy" is often attributed to Nixon's political strategist [[Kevin Phillips (political commentator)|Kevin Phillips]], he did not originate it<ref name="Javits">{{cite news|title=To Preserve the Two-Party System|last=Javits|first=Jacob K.|date=October 27, 1963|work=The New York Times}}</ref> but popularized it.<ref name="Phillips">{{cite book|last=Phillips|first=Kevin|title=The Emerging Republican Majority|publisher=Arlington House|location=New York|year=1969|isbn=978-0-87000-058-4|oclc=18063|url=https://archive.org/details/emergingrepublic00kevi}} passim</ref> In an interview included in a 1970 ''[[New York Times]]'' article, Phillips stated his analysis based on studies of ethnic voting:

{{Blockquote|From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the [[Voting Rights Act]]. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.<ref name="Boyd"/>}}
[[File:NIXONcampaigns.jpg|thumb|[[Richard Nixon]] campaigning in 1968]]

While Phillips sought to increase Republican power by polarizing ethnic voting in general, and not just to win the white South, the South was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level. Gradually, Southern voters began to elect Republicans to Congress and finally to statewide and local offices, particularly as some legacy segregationist Democrats, such as [[Strom Thurmond]], retired or switched to the GOP. In addition, the Republican Party worked for years to develop [[grassroots]] political organizations across the South, supporting candidates for local school boards and city and county offices as examples, but following the [[Watergate scandal]] Southern voters came out in support for the "favorite son" candidate, Southern Democrat [[Jimmy Carter]].

From 1948 to 1984, the Southern states, for decades a stronghold for the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrats]], became key [[swing state]]s, providing the popular vote margins in the [[1960 United States presidential election|1960]], [[1968 United States presidential election|1968]] and [[1976 United States presidential election|1976 elections]]. During this era, several Republican candidates expressed support for [[states' rights]], a reversal of the position held by Republicans since the Civil War. Some political analysts said this term was used in the 20th century as a "code word" to represent opposition to federal enforcement of civil rights for blacks and to federal intervention on their behalf; many individual southerners had opposed passage of the Voting Rights Act.<ref name="Branch"/>