wheat country 1980 elections

[freepcrusher]

IIRC, didn't Carter support wheat from the soviets or something like that which may have pissed off a lot of farmers. Reagan only got 1-2 points more of the popular vote and it was far from a uniform swing. The areas he underperformed the most were in upstate new york and the areas he overperformed the most was in wheat country. The CDs with the biggest swings toward Reagan were ones like TX 19, TX 13, OK 6, KS 1, NE 3 and a few others.

TX 19: 57% Ford, 70% Reagan
TX 13: 50% Ford, 62% Reagan
OK 6: 54% Ford, 68% Reagan
KS 1: 53% Ford, 66% Reagan
NE 3: 61% Ford, 73% Reagan

in the Kansas and Nebraska ones it was probably due to the wheat issue and in the OK and TX ones I think it was a combination of the wheat issue but also the area having a huge natural resources based economy and maybe they thought Carter was hostile to the oil industry?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

maybe they thought Carter was hostile to the oil industry?

They had every reason to think so.  He signed into law the Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act in 1980.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

In Texas, the saying used to be that cotton counties (the area between Lubbock and Dallas) voted Democratic and wheat counties (the Panhandle) voted Republican.