In 1977, Jimmy Carter made an improbable journey from Georgia peanut grower to Democratic president in part by playing on his humble roots and receiving support from America’s farmers. Yet this bedrock voting constituency abandoned a fellow farmer to back Ronald Reagan four years later, after Carter punished Moscow for invading Afghanistan by cutting off grain sales to the Soviet Union. U.S. farmers were already struggling with collapsing crop prices, and the embargo may have been the final straw. Farmers threw their support behind Reagan, who had promised to lift the hated restrictions.
This might seem like ancient history, but it’s still relevant to — and well-remembered in — today’s Farm Belt, where farmers are once again torn between devotion to a president and anger at the tariff policies he’s imposed that are set to wreak havoc on agricultural prices. CONT.
Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, FiveThirtyEight