Presidential election in the United States in 1980

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49th presidential election
November 4th 1980
			Republican Party
			Ronald Reagan / George HW Bush
			electors					489
			be right				43.903.230
									50.7%
			Democratic Party
			Jimmy Carter / Walter Mondale
			electors					49
			be right				35.480.115
									41.0%
			Non-party
			John Anderson / Patrick Lucey
			electors					0
			be right				5,719,850
									6.6%
Election results by state
44 states   Reagan / Bush						6 states + DC   Carter / Mondale
0   Anderson / Lucey
President of the United States
Before the election Jimmy Carter Democratic Party						Elected Ronald Reagan Republican Party

The 49th election of the President of the United States of America took place on November 4, 1980 . It was characterized by the competition between the Democratic President Jimmy Carter and his Republican opponent Ronald Reagan . Due to the stagnating economy and a worsening foreign policy situation, which was particularly marked in the Middle East by the American hostage-taking in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan , Carter was very unpopular.

Reagan, the former governor of California , perceived as charismatic , was able to take advantage of this situation and clearly won against Carter. The election result marked the beginning of the Reagan Revolution .

Candidates

Democrats

Jimmy Carter

Edward Kennedy

• Jerry Brown , Governor of California
• Jimmy Carter, President of the United States
• Cliff Finch , former Mississippi Governor
• Edward Kennedy , US Senator from Massachusetts

Due to Carter's apparent inability to work with members of his own party in Congress, he was challenged in the primaries by Senator Edward Kennedy, a brother of John F. Kennedy , of Massachusetts. Although he was more popular than Carter in the opinion of the public, his campaign was less organized; Kennedy was also still in the public eye by the unexplained car accident at Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, which had then led to the death of his passenger. Although party solidarity during the hostage-taking in Iran gave Carter a head start for the time being and gave up Jerry Brown, who had only won the Michigan primary , Kennedy made a comeback later in the primaries.

At the National Convention in New York in August 1980 , Kennedy gave up the candidacy and gave a speech in which he campaigned for more liberality within the party.

The party congress gave the following result:

• Jimmy Carter: 2123
• Ted Kennedy: 1150
• William Proxmire : 10
• Koryne Kaneski Horbal: 5
• Scott M. Matheson : 5
• Ron Dellums : 3

12 other candidates who each got one or two votes: 18

The nomination of the vice-presidential candidate was not done in the classical sense, as the Kennedy supporters decided to scatter their votes as far as possible into the candidate field, and it took three tries to close the first election. The incumbent Vice President Walter Mondale was ultimately nominated by acclamation in order to be able to keep the party conference within the framework.

republican

Ronald Reagan and George Bush

The Republican candidates for President were:

• John B. Anderson , Illinois MP
• Howard Baker , Senator from Tennessee and Senate Minority Leader
• George Bush , former director of the CIA and ex-chairman of the Republican National Committee
• John Connally , former Texas Governor , former Secretary of the Navy and Treasury
• Phil Crane , Illinois MP
• Bob Dole , Senator from Kansas and the 1976 Vice President
• Ronald Reagan , former California Governor

At the beginning of the election campaign, Ronald Reagan was considered the favorite, if only because of his strong performance in the presidential election campaign in 1976, where he had seriously contested the candidacy of then President Ford. From the first debates, the more liberal former CIA director George Bush emerged as the fiercest competitor, who argued with Reagan primarily over economic matters.

Reagan was a supporter of supply-side economic policy . The key points of this policy were the demand to reduce the tax burden and the high government expenditures that burdened the welfare state since the times of the New Deal and Great Society reforms. The solution, they said, is that economic decisions are no longer made by the state, but rather individually. Reagan promised an economic recovery that would affect all segments of the population. Since tax cuts would also reduce government revenue, it would also be necessary to streamline the state apparatus. Otherwise, large federal deficits would wipe out the effects of a tax cut, as the state would then have to take on debt and interest rates would go up and investment capital would be destroyed again. Reagan therefore promised a drastic streamlining of the state apparatus, from which he assumed that there would be a balanced budget for the first time since 1969. In the primaries Bush called Reagan's economic policy "voodoo economics". This phrase became quite popular.

Bush won the first caucus in Iowa , where Reagan had hardly campaigned, and believed that the moment ("The Big Mo" - "Mo" as an abbreviation for "Momentum") was on his side. However, ahead of the next primary election, Reagan was gaining popularity when, during a TV discussion, he rejected the moderator who tried to cut him off, saying that he had “paid for this microphone”. He then won very clearly in the New Hampshire Primary, which caused most of the other candidates to give up. Anderson gave up in the primaries but ran as an independent candidate. Reagan won most of the subsequent caucuses and primaries, securing the Republican nomination. He originally spoke to Gerald Ford about the possibility of his vice presidency ; but when the complex plan failed - Ford insisted on offering Henry Kissinger and Alan Greenspan cabinet posts, and even hinted at a possible "co-presidency" - he elected Bush as his running mate . The convention took place on July 15, 1980 in Detroit , Michigan.

The results of the party congress were as follows:

• Presidential candidate
  • Ronald Reagan: 1939
  • John B. Anderson: 37
  • George Bush: 13
  • Anne Armstrong : 1

• Vice presidential candidate
  • George Bush: 1832
  • Jesse Helms : 54
  • Jack Kemp : 42
  • Phil Crane: 23

A few others were listed in the wider field of choice.

So the Republican ticket to the 1980 election was Reagan / Bush.

Others

Liberal Republican John B. Anderson ran as an independent candidate after losing at the Republican convention. The Libertarian Party nominated Ed Clark as a presidential candidate and David H. Koch as a vice presidential nominee.

Barry Commoner , who described himself as an eco-socialist, ran for the insignificant Citizens Party , which existed almost entirely in Washington DC from 1979 to 1987. Commoner was a founder of the party, but not a party member.

Other candidates were David McReynolds ( Socialist Party ), Gus Hall ( Communist Party ), John Rarick ( American Independent Party ) and Ellen McCormack ( Right to Life Party) .

Election campaign

Reagan campaigning in South Carolina October 1980

Major campaign themes included the sluggish economy, inflation, the energy crisis and Carter's inability to free the American hostages in Iran . Reagan, who promised to cut taxes and spend more money defending the United States, overtook Carter in the polls during the campaign. At the end of the second TV debate, his invitation to viewers to ask themselves whether they are better or worse than four years ago made a strong impression. Carter, on the other hand, became the target of widespread ridicule when he stated that he had only recently discussed nuclear disarmament issues with his - underage - daughter, Amy.

Result

The election took place on November 4, 1980.

candidate	Political party	be right		electors
		number	percent
Ronald Reagan	republican	43.903.230	50.7%	489
Jimmy Carter	democrat	35.480.115	41.0%	49
John B. Anderson	More independent	5,719,850	6.6%	0
Ed Clark	Libertarian party	921.128	1.1%	0
Barry Commoner	Citizens Party	233.052	0.3%	0
Other		252.303	0.3%	0
total		86,509,678	100%	538

270 votes were necessary for the election to the president.

Reagan beat Carter by just under 10 percent in the popular vote . For the first time in 25 years, the Republicans were able to secure a majority in the Senate. They also made significant gains in the House of Representatives, but it was not enough for a majority. After electoral votes, Reagan was able to retract a landslide victory: 489 votes (majority in 44 states) were 49 (six states and the District of Columbia) for Carter.

Anderson did not get any votes on the panel, but was able to get more than 5.7 million votes nationwide.

literature

• Jeffrey D. Howison: The 1980 Presidential Election: Ronald Reagan and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement. Routledge, New York 2014, ISBN 978-0-415-52192-5 .
• Donald Richard Deskins, Hanes Walton, Sherman C. Puckett: Presidential Elections, 1789-2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2010, ISBN 978-0-472-11697-3 , pp. 469-477 (= Chapter 51: Ronald Reagan's Initial Election. ).

Web links

Commons : 1980 US Presidential Election  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files