Bibb County, Georgia

[Asenath Waite]

Weird trend I noticed, after voting for Carter and Mondale it went for Bush SR in 1988 before returning to the Dems in every election since. What explains this/are there any other counties with that weird pattern?

[beesley]

Bibb's votes today are due to the fact it's largely urban and is now majority black. Bush Sr.'s performance against Dukakis in Georgia was pretty similar against Reagan's against Mondale, and he did flip other counties in the black belt/south, so it's not quite the shock. Obviously Clinton took Georgia so it flipped then, and it was fairly close until Obama when it looks as if the increasing black population turned out (McCain won not very many fewer votes than Bush but Obama surged).

[Warren 4 Secretary of Everything]

Bibb neighbors my home county, it’s about 10 minutes up the road. It’s a largely urban, majority black county. That’s why it voted Democrat today.

[Adam Griffin]

The general trend of white suburbanites leaving/being replaced in what we think of today as "urban counties" by black voters. Besides Fulton & Dekalb (ATL) and Clarke (UGA), there wasn't a single modern-day urban county in GA that voted for Dukakis. Until the 80s give or take, what we think of as urban counties (which at the time were still largely inner-suburban counties in any meaningful definition) were the most GOP places in the state.

Just as an illustration: Clayton County was 73% Reagan in '84; 65% Bush in '88; 45% Clinton in '92.

I imagine there may have had some revolt against a "non-Carter ticket" candidate as well, as the Democratic Party really began to take its modern-day national form in the 1988 election.