some critics, most notably dan carter, have alleged that the rapid growth in republican strength in the south came from a secretly coded message to wallacites and segregationists that the gop was a racist anti-black party seeking their votes. political scientists and historians point out that the timing does not fit the southern strategy model. nixon carried 49 states in 1972, so he operated a successful national rather than regional strategy, but the republican party remained quite weak at the local and state level across the entire south for decades. matthew lassiter argues that nixon's appeal was not to the wallacites or segregationists, but rather to the rapidly emerging suburban middle-class. many had northern antecedents and they wanted rapid economic growth and saw the need to put backlash politics to rest. lassiter says the southern strategy was a "failure" for the gop and that the southern base of the republican party "always depended more on the middle-class corporate economy and on the top-down politics of racial backlash". furthermore, "realignment in the south quote came primarily from the suburban ethos of new south metropolises such as atlanta and charlotte, north carolina, not to the exportation of the working-class racial politics of the black belt".