Take a look at the 1984 county map of Southwest PA. Mondale won almost all those counties that have been trending heavily Republican post 2000.
Mondale was the pro labor traditional New Deal type of Democrat working class whites could identify with. Mondale was seen as a Liberal but not of the 'acid, amnesty, abortion' type like McGovern was. At least in western PA, working class whites seem to have stuck with the Democrats that year. The 1980's were also a time of drastic changes and the rapid deindustrialization of America. Factories were closing and laying off workers left and right and this was the beginning of the end of the Rust Belt.
Exactly. Reagan Democrat =/= Dixiecrat.
Looking at 1980 and 1984 county results, it's pretty obvious that your classic Dixiecrat voted for Carter in 1980 (Reagan lost all the rural counties in the South and barely gained his margin of victory from dominating the metro areas) and then abandoned the Democrats for Reagan in 1984 (but who didn't vote for Reagan in '84?). Conversely (and ironically), as you pointed out, Mondale still won a lot of "Reagan Democrat" areas.
Since you know more about it. Can you explain more into detail why Jimmy Carter in some southern states like arkansas still won a lot of rural counties but went on to lose those states as a whole?
https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1980&fips=5&f=0&off=0&elect=0
It always bothered me that there were states carter lost despite winning the rural areas when one would of thought the rural areas was much more important back then.
This question was not directed at me, but it also sparked my interest, and I'm going to try to find some stuff on the population distribution of those states at the time. I do know that Reagan won most of the South by VERY thin margins (except for the "New South" states like Texas, Virginia and Florida which had trended Republican much earlier).
