How the Country has Changed

By Jim Ellis — Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024

President

An individual named Alex Seitz-Weld on X (a national politics reporter for NBC News) has brought forth an interesting chart to show just how much the country has changed politically over the course of time.

The chart is simply an Electoral College map of the 1976 presidential election (above), which depicts a very different voting pattern compared to what may be unfolding this year. Basically, the changes show an almost complete political reversal.

It may be surprising to see that today’s solid red South went wholly Democrat, for favorite son Jimmy Carter, in the 1976 election. It wasn’t until the 1980 election when the South began to turn toward Republicans and has since not retreated from that voting pattern. Even more surprising, today’s solid blue Pacific Northwest — California, Oregon, and Washington — all voted Republican for then-President Gerald Ford 48 years ago.

In fact, the entire west, from the region’s eastern-most states of North Dakota through Oklahoma, and all domains between there and the Pacific Ocean, voted Republican for then-President Ford. Also in that year, modern day rock-ribbed red Texas went Democrat for Carter.

In all, a majority of states, 28, have changed their ideological positions from the tight presidential election of 1976 where the Democrats carried only 23 states, but with domains large enough to give Carter a 297 to 240 Electoral College victory. A lone elector from Washington cast the 538th Electoral College vote for Ronald Reagan.

Many of the states’ ideological changes proved long lasting. As mentioned, though California, Oregon, and Washington voted Republican in ’76, we now see those three states forming at the very least a major part of the Democrats’ Electoral College partisan base. Other states in this orbit are Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Vermont.

Conversely, the following states, which are now base Republican, previously voted Democratic in the 1976 election: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. Four other states, Florida, Iowa, Montana, and Ohio, are still competitive in certain situations, but are consistently moving toward the Republicans.

Continuing to categorize the changes, states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin that are behaving like swing states today generally favored one side or the other in previous political times.

The Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Virginia electorates were generally Republican, while voters in Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin typically aligned with Democrat candidates.

Other states have remained base votes for one party or the other over a sustained course of time. For the Democrats, their most loyal domains are Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Rhode Island.

The most time-proven loyal Republican electorates are found in the states of Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. Yet, all of these base Democrat and Republican states have elected politicians of the opposite party during the 48-year span.

In conclusion, it appears that the old saying, “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” doesn’t quite apply to American elections. For most places, political transformation over the course of time has occurred. It remains to be seen what underpinnings of change may come from the impending 2024 election.

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