Why did Jimmy Carter underperform in Massachusetts in 1976?

[old timey villain]

another interesting thing about this election that I've noticed is how it was so much less polarized than other elections (outside the deep south at least). Most of the margins of victory in the NE, great plains and west coast and very small, between 5-10 %. Carter only got over 60% in 2 states, Georgia and Arkansas while Ford only broke 60% in Utah. Obviously Georgia makes sense because it was Carter's home state, and Arkansas has a history of supporting down home moderate democrats. And utah is.....utah.

This isn't the case in another close election, 2000. Gore gets over 60% in New York and Rhode Island, and he comes very close in Massachusetts. I suspect his wins in blue states would have been greater without the Nader effect. On the other side, Bush wins 7 states by over 60% of the vote. Interestingly enough, Texas is not one of them.

It's funny to me that Gore and Carter, both native southerners who have a similar performance in their respective elections, have such different results geographically. I guess in 1976 the South had just begun its transition over to the GOP side and still was favorable to southern dems, but by 2000 the realignment had more or less completed and Gore had to look for electoral votes elsewhere.

Another explanation could be the polarization of the candidates themselves. In 2000, Bush and Gore were more ideologically pronounced than Carter and Ford were in 1976. Both presented themselves as pretty moderate, and at times it was hard to tell who was to the left or right of whom. This might explain Carter's strength in the Great Plains and Ford's strength in the Northeast, including Massachusetts. I think the voters were kind of confused, and it came down to who they connected with best, and not where their policies lined up.

Fun Facts about 1976 and 2000
- In 2000, Bush only lost Vermont by a little less than 10 points. 4 years later, he lost it by over 20 points. There's that electoral polarization I was talking about.
-Carter did worse in Mississippi than pretty much anywhere else in the south. He only won it by about 2 points, which could be a sign of strong electoral polarization already occurring there.
-In 1976, Ford lost Ohio by only 11,000 votes, a razor thin margin
-Political historians suggest than one reason Gerald Ford lost Texas was due to a campaign stop there where he struggled to properly eat a tamale. The cultural disconnect could have cost him votes.
-Political historians also suggest that the revelation of George Bush's DUI lost him the state of Maine, as it was the New England state most likely to fall into his column, after NH
-Carter won every single county in Georgia, but one of his weakest counties was DeKalb, which is now one of the strongest Democratic counties in the state.
-Al Gore performed stronger (relatively) in NE states like NJ, NY and MA than Barack Obama did in 2008