Why did Washington state vote Republican in 1960, 1976, and 1980?

[Crumpets]

Washington has been a very white state for a long time, and has generally been among the more affluent states. Although there's always been a contingent of hippie white liberals, they used to be mostly confined to a few neighborhoods in Seattle and some artist colonies like Port Townsend, Bellingham and Vashon Island. It wasn't really until the rise of the tech industry and the resulting influx of Yuppies that the rest of King County started to liberalize, and once that happened, it just became mathematically very difficult for Republicans to do well statewide. However, it wasn't that long ago that the state was still quite competitive on the state level, especially for governor.

I also think that Nixon and Reagan being Westerners helped them in 1960 and 1980. If you look at the 1980 county map in Washington, the two counties that voted for Carter (Pacific and Grays Harbor) were the two that flipped to Trump in 2016 that surprised a lot of people. The same two counties were the only ones to vote for McGovern over Nixon in 1972.