At a Presidential level, Chatham County also leans Democratic: no Republican Presidential nominee has carried Chatham County since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide, although John Kerry came within six votes of losing the county in 2004, and no candidate from either major party candidate has obtained less than thirty-five percent of the county's vote since the three-way 1968 election when Richard Nixon managed to carry the county with merely 36.2% of the vote. Before 1960, Chatham was basically a typical "Solid South" county, only voting Republican in 1928 due to opposition to Al Smith’s Roman Catholic faith, and in 1900 – although in 1892 it was along with Nash County one of two counties in the state to give a plurality of its ballots to Populist James B. Weaver.