Why did Jimmy Carter win New York State in the 1976 Presidential Election?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yes, most specifically the Irish.

The Republicans always got into trouble as well when the dry protestants in the north country started causing trouble. The Republicans won the mayor position in 1890's (how Teddy got on the Police Commission) only to have TR's rigid enforcement of an anti-liquor law bring about their defeat. For Teddy's purposes, he claimed that if the people disliked the law they could vote to change it, and they did by voting his boss and by extension himself onto the unemployment line.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Republicans, fleeing demographic catastrophe since 1854.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

When you say Buckley was the only true Conservative Senator from New York, I would in addition to D'Amato that you mentioned include some others just from the 20th Century like James Wadsworth. He opposed FDA, Anti-Lynching Legislation and Women's suffrage and the minimum wage as well as most all of the New Deal, though one could argue he got more Conservative whilst he was subsequently in the house. The only views in line with New York's majority would be his internationalism and also his opposition to prohibition on rather libertarian grounds.