The Moral Majority and NCPAC were major factors in 1980 Senate races. There was a bumper crop of liberals (George McGovern, Frank Church, Birch Bayh, Gaylord Nelson, and John Culver) who were heavily targeted in states that Reagan won easily. I think that all of the above candidates ran ahead of the national ticket--Carter ran so poorly in those states.
Meanwhile, in the South, the victories that Reagan won narrowly (except for Florida) carried downticket to pick up Senate seats as well (Denton in Alabama, East in North Carolina, Hawkins in Florida). Add a surprise in Georgia (Mattingly defeated Talmadge) and you had perhaps a bigger upset on Election Day 1980 than Reagan's landslide win.
The Republicans winning the Senate that year has to be one of the most unexpected events in recent national elections. I remember that night--and the first time I was alerted to a potential Republican Senate takeover was when Ronald Reagan talked about it in his victory speech.
The irony there is that this was the Senate class whose last election was the Watergate Babies of 1974. Yet the big losers were long time establishment Democrats. It was the 4th and last time according to my calculations that the Senate changed hands in a presidential year in the 20th century (1912, 1932, 1952, 1980).
