So it wasn't all about race
By the 1990s Republicans were starting to win elections at the statewide and local level throughout the South, even though Democrats retained majorities in several state legislatures through the 2000s and 2010s.[35][36] By 2014, the region was heavily Republican at the local, state and national level.[36][37] A key element in the change was the transformation of evangelical white Protestants in the south from largely nonpolitical to heavily Republican. Pew pollsters reported, "In the late 1980s, white evangelicals in the South were still mostly wedded to the Democratic Party while evangelicals outside the South were more aligned with the GOP. But over the course of the next decade or so, the GOP made gains among white Southerners generally and evangelicals in particular, virtually eliminating this regional disparity."[38]Exit polls in the 2004 presidential election showed that Republican George W. Bush led Democrat John Kerry by 70–30% among Southern whites, who comprised 71% of the voters there. By contrast, Kerry had a 90–9 lead among the 18% of African American Southern voters. One-third of the Southern voters said they were white evangelicals; they voted for Bush by 80–20.[39]
After the 2016 election, every state legislature in the South was GOP-controlled.[40] Republican nominee for President Donald Trump notably won Elliott County, KY, becoming the first Republican nominee for President to ever win that county.[41]
Republicans won the white southern vote with religion, guns and gay issues too. Social wedge issues. Race is only one of them.
