Why were Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama close in the 1980 election?

[NotSoLucky]

I know Carter was a native southerner, but I was still shocked by how close these states were, given how none of them are even remotely competitive for Democrats anymore.

[Podgy the Bear]

Even though Carter's vote slipped across the board in 1980, his decline in the rural white South was not as bad.  Plus, he did have an increased black vote in Deep South counties--which helped in states like MS and LA.  Carter's big drops in the South were in suburban areas where they voted for him in 1976--Cobb and Gwinnett counties in GA are good examples here.

As a teenager growing up in TN in 1980, I can tell you that no one expected Reagan would win by the margin that he did.  Going into the debate one week prior to Election Night, it was thought that Carter's base in the South (except for FL, MS, and TX) was pretty secure.  Reagan's debate performance clearly helped him nationally--and the letdown about the hostage crisis the weekend before the election turned a fairly close election into a rout.

[darklordoftech]

Carter and Reagan were both good fits for the South.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Even though Carter's vote slipped across the board in 1980, his decline in the rural white South was not as bad.  Plus, he did have an increased black vote in Deep South counties--which helped in states like MS and LA.  Carter's big drops in the South were in suburban areas where they voted for him in 1976--Cobb and Gwinnett counties in GA are good examples here.

As a teenager growing up in TN in 1980, I can tell you that no one expected Reagan would win by the margin that he did.  Going into the debate one week prior to Election Night, it was thought that Carter's base in the South (except for FL, MS, and TX) was pretty secure.  Reagan's debate performance clearly helped him nationally--and the letdown about the hostage crisis the weekend before the election turned a fairly close election into a rout.

Yah I was watching a video of 1980 cbs election night coverage and when Rather said that Carter would lose Ohio really badly, he said that doesnt mean Carter's hopes are gone as he believes he could still win Illionis and Texas.

[Vice President Christian Man]

The 1980 election represented the turning point in what would become a major realignment. Many whites were split mainly by age with older voters being more likely to stay with Carter for ancestral reasons, while younger Dems who had less of an attachment to the Dem. party and likely came of age during the 1960s supported Reagan. Unlike LBJ, Carter was not seen as alien or out of touch with Southern culture, but rather Reagan was seen as a marginally better fit because of the way in which he emphasized traditional cultural values in that area of the country, which Carter didn't touch upon as much, since Carter was trying to defend the bellwether areas he won in '76 including The Midwest and Northeast, while painting Reagan as a Goldwaterite which was unsuccessful.

[OSR stands with Israel]

The 1980 election represented the turning point in what would become a major realignment. Many whites were split mainly by age with older voters being more likely to stay with Carter for ancestral reasons, while younger Dems who had less of an attachment to the Dem. party and likely came of age during the 1960s supported Reagan. Unlike LBJ, Carter was not seen as alien or out of touch with Southern culture, but rather Reagan was seen as a marginally better fit because of the way in which he emphasized traditional cultural values in that area of the country, which Carter didn't touch upon as much, since Carter was trying to defend the bellwether areas he won in '76 including The Midwest and Northeast, while painting Reagan as a Goldwaterite which was unsuccessful.

One article from then even said that Carter’s only hope for winning re-election was hope that Reagan would be perceived as dangerous but the issue was him attacking Reagan as Goldwater type dangerous also undermined the main reason people liked him which was he was a decent man and above dirty politics. The issue with that is he didn’t have a chance of winning  re-election on his record either so Carter really was in an extremely tough situation .

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/1980/nov/06/usa.haroldjackson


Really Carter Honestly didn’t have a chance and if you look at the 1980 debate , Reagan really didn’t perform all that great but the fact is Carter’s whole campaign was basically that Reagan is someone who you can’t trust with the red button and that he’d eliminate programs like social security and once Reagan showed he wasn’t either of the two , Carter was gonna collapse . The one line zingers are overrated and the fact is Carter basically had no chance of realistically even coming close in 1980

[DS0816]

I know Carter was a native southerner, but I was still shocked by how close these states were, given how none of them are even remotely competitive for Democrats anymore.

1976 Jimmy Carter—who turned 97 on 10.01.2021 and holds the record for the longest-living U.S. president and for most lived years after leaving the presidency—was the last winning Democrat who won primarily through the South. (So those states you cited were 1980 Republican pickups.)

Also worth mentioning is 1988 George Bush was the first winning Republican to carry all Old Confederacy states with margins above what he received nationally. (Closest, in that respect, was Louisiana. He won nationally by +7.73 percentage points and Louisiana by +10.21.)

The point: Those states, back in 1980, were in transition.

[Adam Griffin]

It was the first election in which white Southern evangelicals began to move to the GOP en masse. Many still held on for Carter, but there was enough peel-off to make the difference. Keep in mind that relatively few voters of color were "online" even at this point in some of these states, so the correlation between vote share and white vote share would have been quite tight at this point.

Even in Georgia (where ~20% of the electorate was black in 1980), Carter would have won 47-50% of whites (two-way model).