Georgia 1992

[Skill and Chance]

If Georgia didn't go straight to Bill Clinton at 7 PM, Georgia would've been the only one too close to call by 3 AM, Clinton would have to wait a week or two to win the Peach State.

A total of 300 EVs went to Bill Clinton as soon as the polls closed in 1992, and in 1996, a total of 350 EVs went to Bill Clinton as soon as the polls closed in those states.

In 1992, Bill Clinton carried my home state of NJ by a margin of just 2.37%! (In 1988, Bush won it by 14 points, and is the only state excluded from the Dukakis strategy to not cast a single vote for a Republican since the 1980s.)

Maine was excluded from the Dukakis strategy too. So were NM, NH, VA, CO, and NV!

This is also the only election where Vermont and Georgia both voted Democrat in the same election (if you don't include the elections before the founding of the Republican party). Vermont never went Democrat until 1964, Georgia never went Republican until 1964. Both states voted Republican in 1972, 1984, and 1988.

It's important to note that Vermont voted straight Whig before the Republican Party even existed. Why was it Republican for so long?

Republicans were the party of Protestant Yankees from birth. Whigs were as well but not the same extent. A lot of free soil Democrats in VT never went back after joining the GOP. There was a Jeffersonian/Jacksonian element within the state, but it got largely absorbed as well.

Politics became a generational thing and VT had a very strictly adhered to political establishment within the GOP and those that tried to skip in line, were often destroyed politically. That mattered more than ideology so there were a large number of progressives and "traditionalist" (Protectionist, anti-immigration, isolationist) Conservatives within the same party in the state.

In the 1950's and 1960's, Conservatism became defined nationally in a way that made it hostile to the state's voters, especially on defense issues. The Conservative wing collapsed and the first Democrats got elected in 1958. After that, the only ones who could win were the heirs to the Progressive wing (Prouty, Aiken, Stafford, Jeffords), and as the state's population exploded from New York transplants,  the Protestant religious fervor pretty much collapsed, and the rise of environmentalism became a factor.

By 1992, enough old people who still were part of the tribalistic Republicanism had passed away, leaving the state open to voting for a Democrat. And it hasn't looked back since.

I think a very underrated factor in Vermont and New England's political transformation is that the region was the heartland of an ancient century religious left movement (not exactly leftist in today's terms, but on the issues that carry over from that time) that collapsed almost overnight after they finally got a child labor ban past SCOTUS in 1938.  That was a 100 year struggle from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, and after it was finally won, the movement was divided on war and peace and never really found a new issue to coalesce around.  Prohibition and its ultimate repeal also discredited them significantly.  It wasn't a clean R vs. D split, but more a Protestant/Catholic divide with both parties having a foothold in the movement and in the establishment that resisted it.  Vermont was on the establishment side of this divide after 1890 or so and steadfastly opposed FDR.   

Ironically, I would imagine the modern religious right would find itself in a similar crisis if Roe v. Wade ever truly goes down.