The "Reagan Revolution," 1984
The success of the "Southern strategy" was made evident at the Presidential level in the 1984 election, pitting Ronald Reagan against Democrat Walter Mondale. (Georgia Democrat Jimmy Carter, the Democratic nominee for 1976 and 1980, obscured this because he was competitive in the South). Democrats had picked up votes in the South due to the re-enfranchisement of blacks via the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This is observable in the low Republican (hence high Democratic) turnout in areas with large black populations--the Southern Black Belt and urban North. However, Democrats lost more white votes than they gained black votes--not only in the South, but in white Northern suburbs. Thomas and Mary Edsall, in Chain Reaction (W.W. Norton, 1991), argue that Republican success in the Northern suburbs showed that opposition to government programs that benefit blacks appealed to Northern whites, who, identifying crime and welfare dependency with blacks, were receptive to coded Republican messages ("welfare queens," "special interests," "quotas") appealing to antiblack racial antipathies.