Question: Republicans and Democrats, what happened?

To make a grossly oversimplified summary:

The Republican party started out as a mostly Northern party associated with northern industry and anti-slavery. In contrast, the Democrats were a pro-slavery party associated with the agrarian South.

After the Civil War, the Democrats not only were vehemently white supremacist, they also continued to represent rural agrarian interests, and were the party of poor white southerners. In contrast, the Republican party, being the party of industry, would be increasingly associated with the Capitalist class.

As time went on and the Republicans were solidly the party of the rich industrialist elite, the Democrats started making inroads with poor northern whites, who naturally had very different interests than their bosses.

Thus the demographics of the Democratic party had changed and at some point reached a crucial tipping point. The Democrats had become the party associated with the lower classes, and started supporting the civil rights of black lower class factory workers as well as white.

This alienated white Southerners from the Democratic party, and the Republicans....rushed in the to fill the gap, with their policies changing accordingly, while still being the pro-business party of the capitalist elite. They also increasingly embraced socially conservative views to attract their new party base, as exemplified with their alliance with conservative churches, which would become the Religious Right. Meanwhile the increasingly liberal policies of the Democrats attracted middle and upper-middle class educated liberals, creating the current party configurations.

So, yeah. That's how the party preferences of the North and South went through a complete switcharoo in 150 years. Just look at the presidential electoral maps.
 
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