Flips projected at poll closing time

[Calthrina950]

In 1976, the networks projected Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia for Jimmy Carter at poll closing time; all six of those states, obviously, had voted by massive landslide margins for Richard Nixon just four years earlier. The shifts in Arkansas and Georgia were particularly dramatic; Arkansas went from 69% Nixon to 64% Carter, and Georgia from 75% Nixon to 67% Carter. The native-son effect within the South which Carter had in that election handed him the Presidency.

In 1964, Vermont was called for Lyndon B. Johnson at poll closing time. Johnson of course, was the first Democrat ever to carry this powerfully Republican state, which had never voted Democratic since the founding of the modern Party in 1828 (it had voted National Republican, Whig, and Know-Nothing before the Republican Party's formation in 1854). Richard Nixon had won the state with 59% of the vote in the previous election; Johnson carried it with 66%!

[Calthrina950]

There's also 1972, where Richard Nixon was projected as the winner in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maine, Hawaii, and Maryland as soon as polls closed; all those states had voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Nixon was also projected the winner at closing time in all of the states won by George Wallace: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana, crushing George McGovern in all of these states as the Wallace vote virtually unanimously transferred to him.