1976
Reading the 1976 result in Virginia
Virginia backed Ford (Republican) in the 1976 presidential election, casting 12 electoral votes for the ticket. Nationally the result broke the other way — Jimmy Carter (Democratic) won the presidency, leaving Virginia among the states he did not carry.
It marked the 3rd consecutive election in which Virginia backed the Republican party, a streak reaching back to 1968. It stood apart from its neighbors: North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and District of Columbia went the other way that year. Across the 58 presidential elections Virginia has taken part in, it has most often sided with the Democratic party (33 times). The vote fell within the Cold War Realignment — Nixon, Reagan, and the Republican South.
In the national count, Jimmy Carter took 297 of the 538 electoral votes, against Gerald Ford's 240. Jimmy Carter led the national popular vote with 50.08% of the ballots cast.
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