Did Carter win the Southern white vote in 1976?

[TDAS04]

I would guess not.

While Carter carried every state of the former Confederacy but Virginia, it seems that minority voters put him over the top in many states, and were thus responsible for his victory over Ford.  Considering that the Voting Rights Act had been well-into effect, African Americans possibly provided the margin of victory in of all of them, except Georgia, Arkansas, and maybe Tennessee.  Especially in Mississippi, Carter won by only 2% although he must have won most of the black vote.  Perhaps Southern whites were just skeptical of any Democratic President nominee after the Civil Rights Act, and were hesitant even to vote for a candidate like Carter.

Does anyone think that Carter received more Southern white votes than Ford, or if not, did he come close?

[Mr.Phips]

Almost certainly not.  Most of the south was actually quite close outside of Georgia.  The amazing thing is that Ford actually got about 20% of the black vote.

[DINGO Joe]

Well, if Ford got 20% of the black vote, then Carter probably won the white vote in North Carolina and Kentucky (if Kentucky is Southern--heck Brad Paisley thinks WV is Southern).  Does anyone know what the turnout was by state by race in 1976?  Is that something you get if you subscribe to the site?

[TDAS04]

Well, if Ford got 20% of the black vote, then Carter probably won the white vote in North Carolina and Kentucky (if Kentucky is Southern--heck Brad Paisley thinks WV is Southern).  Does anyone know what the turnout was by state by race in 1976?  Is that something you get if you subscribe to the site?

Kentucky is Southern, but I was just referring to the 11 Confederate States.  (I consider Oklahoma to be Southern too).

From what I've heard, Ford got only 15% or less of the black vote.

[old timey villain]

The interesting thing about the deep south is that Democrats don't need to get anywhere close to winning the white vote in order to win the region. Ford probably won the white vote in every southern state except Georgia but he still won almost every state in the region.

Today, a Democrat could conceivably win Georgia with 25-30% of the white vote, Alabama with around 35%, SC with 35-40% and Mississippi with around 25%

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

IIRC, he lost it by about 52-46.

[TDAS04]

The interesting thing about the deep south is that Democrats don't need to get anywhere close to winning the white vote in order to win the region. Ford probably won the white vote in every southern state except Georgia but he still won almost every state in the region.

Today, a Democrat could conceivably win Georgia with 25-30% of the white vote, Alabama with around 35%, SC with 35-40% and Mississippi with around 25%

Carter must have won the white vote in Arkansas, since he carried the state by 30%.

Anyway, it seems ironic that a majority of white Southerners probably voted for a moderate Michigan Yankee instead of this "bumpkin" from rural Georgia, and that the African American vote provided the winning margin for the Deep South Governor.  

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

It isn't, really. Though Carter partially recovered what Johnson/Humphrey/McGovern lost, the Southern white vote had still shifted right. Though Carter fit many of them well (hence why he did better than any Democrat since in the South), it wasn't enough to win Southern whites outright.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

assuming black turnout of something like 2/3 that of whites, Carter won the white vote in GA, AR and probably TN, and came close in AL, FL and the Carolinas.

[DINGO Joe]

IIRC, he lost it by about 52-46.

According to the CBS/NYT exit poll Ford won the White Southern vote 52-46.  Carter won the AFrican-American vote 82-16.  Carter won the Hispanic vote 75-24. 

[HansOslo]

I wouldn’t be surprised if Carter won the white vote in at least some of these states. I have read somewhere that Carter projected a lot of different images to different voters. To white southerners he was the candidate that would preserve the ethnic makeup of their neighborhoods. To northern liberals he was the Anti-Nixon, the man that always would tell the truth. To black voters he could be the Deep-South governor who heralded the end of Jim Crow. This made for a winning coalition in 1976, but still a coalition that it would be difficult maintaining in the long run.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The amazing thing is that Ford actually got about 20% of the black vote.

That was around standard at the time, when there was still some residual black Republicanism. The current numbers are mostly the result of a certain Republican Presidential candidate who started his campaign talking about "states' rights" in Philadelphia, MS.

The interesting thing about the deep south is that Democrats don't need to get anywhere close to winning the white vote in order to win the region. Ford probably won the white vote in every southern state except Georgia but he still won almost every state in the region.

Today, a Democrat could conceivably win Georgia with 25-30% of the white vote, Alabama with around 35%, SC with 35-40% and Mississippi with around 25%

Carter must have won the white vote in Arkansas, since he carried the state by 30%.

Anyway, it seems ironic that a majority of white Southerners probably voted for a moderate Michigan Yankee instead of this "bumpkin" from rural Georgia, and that the African American vote provided the winning margin for the Deep South Governor. 

Take a look at the 1976 map in the South. Carter DID in fact win most of the "redneck" and very rural white areas. The areas that voted for Ford tended to urban and white flight suburban areas, the type of places that probably were still sore over integration and blamed the Democrats, and thought Carter was a wuss on foreign policy or "law and order".

[Stranger in a strange land]

The interesting thing about the deep south is that Democrats don't need to get anywhere close to winning the white vote in order to win the region. Ford probably won the white vote in every southern state except Georgia but he still won almost every state in the region.

Today, a Democrat could conceivably win Georgia with 25-30% of the white vote, Alabama with around 35%, SC with 35-40% and Mississippi with around 25%

Fun fact: if Obama in 2008 had gotten the same percentage of the white vote in Mississippi and Alabama as he got in Oklahoma, he would have won both states.

[TDAS04]

Take a look at the 1976 map in the South. Carter DID in fact win most of the "redneck" and very rural white areas. The areas that voted for Ford tended to urban and white flight suburban areas, the type of places that probably were still sore over integration and blamed the Democrats, and thought Carter was a wuss on foreign policy or "law and order".

True.  Carter won most of the rural counties, while Ford did better in the metropolitan areas (Ford actually carried Hinds County, Mississippi [Jackson] by 23%).  Economics probably helped Carter win poorer, rural whites, and 1976 may have been a rare election in which a combination of blacks and poor whites delivered the region for a candidate.  Obviously, that coalition did not last long, since the GOP now consistently receives over 70% of Deep South white voters, regardless of economic status.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

The white vote may have looked something like this.

[Mr.Phips]

The white vote may have looked something like this.

I'd bet that Ford won the white vote in Missouri.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'd estimate this as a white vote map:

[pbrower2a]

The amazing thing is that Ford actually got about 20% of the black vote.

That was around standard at the time, when there was still some residual black Republicanism. The current numbers are mostly the result of a certain Republican Presidential candidate who started his campaign talking about "states' rights" in Philadelphia, MS.

The interesting thing about the deep south is that Democrats don't need to get anywhere close to winning the white vote in order to win the region. Ford probably won the white vote in every southern state except Georgia but he still won almost every state in the region.

Today, a Democrat could conceivably win Georgia with 25-30% of the white vote, Alabama with around 35%, SC with 35-40% and Mississippi with around 25%

Carter must have won the white vote in Arkansas, since he carried the state by 30%.

Anyway, it seems ironic that a majority of white Southerners probably voted for a moderate Michigan Yankee instead of this "bumpkin" from rural Georgia, and that the African American vote provided the winning margin for the Deep South Governor. 

Take a look at the 1976 map in the South. Carter DID in fact win most of the "redneck" and very rural white areas. The areas that voted for Ford tended to urban and white flight suburban areas, the type of places that probably were still sore over integration and blamed the Democrats, and thought Carter was a wuss on foreign policy or "law and order".

1. America was much less politically polarized in 1976 than today. Just look at the 20% black vote for Ford, which would be impossible for an honest-to-Jesse-Helms rightist. Carter and Ford were both moderates by current standards.

2. There was still a large 'liberal Republican' vote that has since drifted to the Democrats. 

3. It is not so clear that Carter was much more 'liberal' than Ford. I suspect that southern Democrats who voted with Nixon in 1972 turned back to the Democratic Party after elected Southern Democrats like Sam Ervin went after Nixon for dirty partisan tricks.  Ford had the taint of Nixon, but Reagan wouldn't.

4. Only in a few elections is the South decidedly more liberal than the North. The South of the early to middle 1970s had a Democratic coalition based on New Deal Democrats and the comparatively new black vote. Just look at the 1976 electoral map and you see Carter winning several states that no later Democrat has ever won since -- South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas while losing a raft of states that have gone for Democrats in five or six  of the last Presidential elections. The one Southern state that Carter did not win is Virginia -- which has since drifted D strongly enough that Barack Obama won it decisively twice.

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?f=1&off=0&year=1976   

5. It is practically inconceivable that any close Presidential election would look much like that of 1976 for a very long time. It would more likely resemble a near-inversion. I shall create a map to that effect.   

[pbrower2a]

Contrast Obama 2012 to Carter 1976, and the two would be almost identical in electoral votes had Obama lost Florida (his weakest state) in 2012. But look how different the results were!

Carter 1976/Obama 2012  131
Ford 1976/Romney   2012    64
Ford 1976/Obama    2012  182
Carter 1976/Romney2012  139 

My count is off (I am using the electoral votes of 2012 here). The states changing sides between 1976 and 2012 account for more than half the electoral votes.


Basically the Presidential election of 1976 is ancient history these days. It has almost no predictive value on how any Democratic win or close election looks like. 

[Indy Texas]

No. I'm assuming he won the white vote in Georgia. And given his large margins in Arkansas and Tennessee and the relatively small black populations there, he'd almost have to have won the white vote in those states.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'd estimate this as a white vote map:

Did Ford win whites by that much? That would be weird considering the US electorate was much whiter then than it is today. Ford could not have pulled a Romneyesque margin and still lost the election.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'd estimate this as a white vote map:

Did Ford win whites by that much? That would be weird considering the US electorate was much whiter then than it is today. Ford could not have pulled a Romneyesque margin and still lost the election.

It is surprising - but I can't find any state where I plausibly overestimated the effect of the nonwhite vote.

[Mechaman]

I'd estimate this as a white vote map:

Did Ford win whites by that much? That would be weird considering the US electorate was much whiter then than it is today. Ford could not have pulled a Romneyesque margin and still lost the election.

Imma gonna stop you right there playa and point something out real quickly: that map isn't a "Romneyesque margin".  After all, Romney supposedly won 59% of the white vote.  As you are well aware, this is what an election with 58.77% of the popular vote looked like:



Granted this previous map is of the overall 1984 results and the other map we're discussing is Shua's white vote map for 1976.  Not exactly alike, but I believe the same general principle.  Given that there are only a few states that have a 60% or above blue shade, I think it's safe to conclude that most states were 59.49% or less pro-Republican whites (if using rounding).  Really, I could see Shua's map being closer to 53% pro-Ford than the 59% Romney won.
Really though, if you look at the map it makes a good deal of sense.  Given the Democratic voting culture of the times, I'm not surprised to see Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island being red states in a northern sea of blue states.  After all, those three states had pretty traditionally white ethnic Democrats that made up a chunk of the political culture of said states that stuck out like sore thumbs amongst generic white majority protestant neighbors (remember, this is pre-Reagan!)

Which goes to show just how much of a factor non-whites were becoming in the Democratic coalition circa 1976.  I would argue, besides rural blacks in the South, urban minorities helped Carter a lot in the North.  This map really isn't an exaggeration more than it shows the natural advantage the GOP had going into the 1980's due to dominance amongst white voters in a nation that was, compared to today, megawhite.

Just my two cents.

EDIT: Yep, just looked up the voting stats on Wikipedia.  Apparently Ford won 52% of the white vote and Carter won 47%.  Like I said, vote distribution is more spread out than one would think.

EDIT: Reworded some of the post to the past tense.  Due to the less hackish leans of the time it was easier in general to get election maps that looked like landslides with less % of the vote.  Now days, I imagine that a Romney 59% map would look more divided than the 52% Ford one.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Almost certainly not.  Most of the south was actually quite close outside of Georgia.  The amazing thing is that Ford actually got about 20% of the black vote.

Northern Democrats seem to do better with the southern black vote.

[後援会]

I'm not sure if Carter won the white vote in Kentucky/Tennessee.

For one, those historically were the most Republican of the southern states, Tennessee moreso than Kentucky.

Kentucky was a union state for a reason, so yeah.

And Eastern Tennessee has always been a Republican stronghold. The place voted for Lincoln! Tennessee was always Democrat-leaning, but in good years, Republicans could take the state. The rest of the South usually wasn't like that.