Jimmy Carter carried every county between the Apalachicola and Suwannee Rivers on Election Day 1980. Florida was easily Reagan’s best southern state in this election and gave him a larger margin of victory by % than any state east of the Mississippi except for then rock-ribbed Republican New Hampshire. Reagan’s campaign which was based partly on suspended reality bordering on outright fictional fantasy and partly on race and religion baiting was wildly successful south of Ocala in the state.

However in 1980 as the moral majority swept Ronald Reagan into office, the counties of the Big Bend and Eastern Panhandle wisely resisted what the rest of the state could not- Ronald Reagan. Either way the counties of the Big Bend region, the interior of the state were voting largely based on cultural considerations. In 1968, race and Vietnam protesters had been the issues whereas in 1972 school busing was the issue. These voters overwhelmingly supported George Wallace in 1968, running as an Independent, stuck with Wallace in the 1972 Democratic Primary leading him to an overwhelming statewide victory and then voted en masse for Richard Nixon in the fall of 1972 helping him to a massive 44 point victory in the state. We’ve spent a lot of time the last few weeks talking about the “dixiecrat” vote in north Florida as well as the interior of the state.