Tennessee wasn't that much different than the rest of the South in 1984, though it was the only state in the region where Reagan failed to break 60 percent.
Mondale did pretty well relatively speaking in North Central Eastern Tennessee, where he actually did better than Carter in a few counties. This was also true of a few counties in western Virginia as well (although not in Alabama...his showing looks good in retrospect compared to Kerry, but at the time he did very poorly for a Democrat in northern Alabama).
Dukakis did very poorly in central and western Tennessee. He lost both Davidson county (Nashvile) and Shelby county (Memphis). Mondale lost both, too, but by narrower margins than Dukakis in each.
mondale's strength in southwest virginia can largely be credited to the united mine workers. mondale was a wet dream of organized labor.
Mondale also had an excellent GOTV effort (for his time) through the union apparatus. In TN, at least, most of them voted for him. Can't say the same for the industrial NE, obviously.
