A New Southern Strategy (or Donald Trump is My President)

While there have always been more registered Democratic voters in the state than Republicans, Republican strategists under Richard Nixon set out to bridge the gap by dividing the electorate in the South by race, using the Democratic registration of Blacks as a catalyst to mobilize their own base to secure high Republican voter turnout.The Republican Party's strongest support came from older voters and non-college-educated white men, while nine out of ten African American voters supported Clinton.[...]it was Republican strategists who secured the Republican win by reducing the Democrat's 4% electorate advantage in Florida through a campaign of targeted suppression on the basis of race that was begun in the 1970s, finally coming to culmination in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.