The voters I knew back then that were total bigots held their noses and supported Wallace. They thought we should have a race war and exterminate black people. They wanted a race war. Wallace was their 2nd choice. Without Wallace they just didn't vote. The result in 1972 looked like a vote for Nixon but that is a simple-minded explanation. In fact, many of the Wallace type folks simply did not vote. The result was that the (white) Democrat South, which had been reliable Democrat voters for nearly 100 years, stayed home. This has been popularly mythologized as a vote for Nixon.

In truth, the southern bigot vote hated Nixon even more than they hated a liberal Democrat. They had hated Republicans since Lincoln. Republicans perpetrated legal theft under the euphemism of "reconstruction" which retarded southern economic development for 80 years. Many southern Republicans (older white ones) still feel that way. They view Republicans as NE yankee wealth engineering the rape of the south for personal economic gain. The Democrats have accidentally sacrificed that generational resentment in their bid for a broader base.

Remember that they voted for Jimmy Carter the first time, rather than Gerald Ford. It was not simply because Carter was from the south. It was because he was a Democrat (first) and not a damned yankee fatcat politician. It wasn't until Ronald Reagan ran for election that the southern conservatives and bigots could bring themselves to vote for a Republican. And it was NOT because Reagan was a bigot. Reagan never directly pandered for the bigot vote.

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