Nonetheless, in 1964 Republican Barry Goldwater may have won a small majority of white voters,[b][3] although he was beaten by virtually universal support for incumbent President Lyndon Johnson by a black vote estimated at 175 thousand.

However, with the Voting Rights Act's passage, a reaction set in amongst these, and indeed amongst almost all Southern poor whites outside the unionized coalfields of Appalachia.

[4] Former Alabama Governor George Wallace, running in North Carolina under the moniker of the “American Party”, appealed very strongly to most white voters in the eastern half of the state who had become extremely critical of black protesters, student radicals, and rising crime rates.

The Alabama segregationist carried almost all of the Piedmont and Outer Banks, and some Black Belt areas where black voter registration was still limited – the very areas that had allowed John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson II to carry North Carolina when other Outer South states went Republican.

In these previously loyal regions whites felt President Johnson had moved much too far on civil rights issues, and consequent support for highly segregationist candidates in Democratic primary elections[7] led them naturally to Wallace.