Not much is changed here, in what is largely a North vs South divide (where the upper limits of South encompass Kansas, Missouri and Maryland). Southerners fall in love with Carter, while the rest of the country (while still moving away from the GOP) is more lukewarm toward him. Still, we end up with a second exception to this near-perfect pattern (the first being Hawaii). Indeed, New York actually ends up trending Democrat. I was really surprised to find this out, especially because this is unique to the NYC-centric State and other very urban States like Chicago or Pennsylvania moved in the opposite direction (OK, it's only a 1-point trend, but still). Maybe Nixon overperformed in the NY area in 1972? Or maybe there's something about Carter that New Yorkers really like? Or something happened to the area in between these two elections? I have no idea, but it's pretty interesting. Apart from that, there's no big surprise. Worth pointing out that Pacific ends up being the second most R-trending State. Clearly West Coast liberals really loved McGovern but weren't much thrilled by Carter.
Ford did a lot worse in NYC especially than he could of due to his initial refusal to grant a federal bailout to NYC, which was doing really badly in the 70's. He did eventually relent, but he performed a lot worse than he could have because of that initial refusal.
All great work, by the way. Excellent timeline.
