I'm going to argue that the manifestation of the "Southern Strategy" in 1968 is actually pretty overstated. When you look at the map, none of the Deep South states voted for Nixon. Of course that was because the Wallace effect obscures it, but even so - in LA, MS, AL, Humphrey still finished ahead of Nixon. Nixon did win the Upper South but that was a region that had sorta had a Republican lean in the postwar era anyway (VA, NC and TN all voted for Nixon in 1960, too).
If we're going by what the map looked like, you could make an outside case for what 1972 being a realignment. It looked so different than every Repubican landslide that had come before it, because Nixon not only swept the old Solid South but dominated there compared to the nation as a whole.
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