CA 1984 - A subtle sign of what was to come?

[SingingAnalyst]

Yes, it was a harbinger of things to come.

While the Dem / Rep breakdown in CA was similar in 1984 and 1980 (it actually voted more Dem in '84, based on the percentage breakdown of the 2-party vote), the county-by-county results, of course, were not. San Francisco went from 52.4-31.9 Dem in '80 to 67.4-31.4 Dem in '84. Orange County on the other hand went from 68-23 R in '80 to 75-24 R in '84. LA County was in the middle, going from 50-40 R in '80 to 54.5-44.4 R in '84. So the results became much more unbalanced. I suspect a lot of San Francisco Republicans have left the city since then, and a lot of Republicans elsewhere in the state have simply left the state.

[SingingAnalyst]

Yeah, not really sure it was that important that CA was below the national average.  Remember, despite more simplified storytelling that our history books prefer, most of the South was the slowest to come around to Reagan (Carter almost won nearly every Southern state with just a final push/doing a little better in the suburban areas), and the South tends to have the wildest swings.  Dixie finally coming around in full force in 1984 was going to make a lot of solidly Republican states in the North and West look comparatively "less Republican."

The sheer number of narrow victories Reagan won in the South in 1980 remains, I think, one of the most remarkable electoral facts of my lifetime. I think Carter won the combined PV's of MA, RI, DE, MD, DC, WV, KY, TN, NC, SC, GA, AL, MS, AR, and LA, but of course Reagan won far more EV's from these states.