I was really young when Ronald Reagan came to Wrangell.

My babysitter and I were playing at the ferry terminal beach, and we saw a lot of commotion near City Dock. Her mom pulled up in a car and said, “Come quick! The president is in town!” We made our way to City Dock in no time, and there he was, former president Ronald Reagan, surrounded by everyone I knew. I think the whole town came out. He was wearing a cream-colored sweater and had Nancy hanging off his arm. We all gawked at him like he was a movie star.

A few years back, I began tabulating Wrangell’s statewide and national election results. These results help tell a story of change over time, and they help explain moments like Wrangell’s reaction to Reagan’s visit. Sure, Wrangell tends to vote Republican, but some have done much better than others, and Reagan did very well. I released Wrangell Votes to President to share those results with the public.

I prefer to stick to history from the long ago, and this episode delves uncomfortably close to the present. My hope is that people use this episode to spark interesting conversations about the past. Why did reliably Republican Alaska vote for Democrat LBJ in 1964? How did George H.W. Bush become so unpopular in 1992? Why was his son, George W. Bush, the most popular candidate ever in 2000?

An episode like this one is a really good example of how historians do more than cobbling together quotations. These election results are freely available from the Alaska Division of Elections, and anyone with a basic understanding of spreadsheets could type each number into a cell and click a button to generate a chart. I imagine there are powerful political consultants who have already tabulated this type of information, so the public should have it, as well.