Given that the percentage of respondents saying minorities should “help themselves” was at an all-time high, eight percentage points greater than four years earlier—and the fact that there was no diminished support for spending on things like education, Social Security, crime control, and the environment—racial animus helps explain part of this electoral bounty; and also why, while in 1976 the Republicans managed no electoral votes in the South except for Virginia’s, this time they nabbed all but Georgia’s twelve. One of the victims of Reagan’s coattails in the South
