The political ramifications of this demographic shift to the Sun Belt was enormous. The flood of conservative retirees to the South, once a Democratic stronghold, shifted the balance of power in American politics. Between 1940 and 1980, warm-climate states in the South gained twenty-nine electoral college votes, while the colder states of the Northeast and the Rust Belt lost thirty-one. Among the first to figure this out was Richard Nixon, who wooed these Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s with anti–civil rights messages and racial dog whistles. American politics has never been the same
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