Presidential election in the United States in 1984

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‹  1980  •  USA flag •  1988
50th presidential election
November 6, 1984

Official Portrait of President Reagan 1981-cropped.jpg
Republican Party
Ronald Reagan / George HW Bush
electors 525  
be right 54.455.472  
  
58.8%
WalterMondale.png
Democratic Party
Walter Mondale / Geraldine Ferraro
electors 13  
be right 37,577,352  
  
40.6%

Election results by state
Map of election results by state
  49 states  
Reagan / Bush
  1 state + DC  
Mondale / Ferraro

President of the United States
Before the election
Ronald Reagan
Republican Party

The presidential election in the United States in 1984 took place on 6 November 1984 instead and was the 50th election of a President of the United States. Re-elected was Ronald Reagan , who was able to continue to exercise his office as 40th President of the United States. He defeated the Democratic candidate Walter Mondale , who served as Vice President under Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981 , by a clear majority.

Candidates

The Republican Party unanimously nominated incumbent Ronald Reagan as a presidential candidate and George HW Bush again as a candidate for vice president.

The Democratic Party nominated former Vice President Walter Mondale , who had been severely harassed by Senator Gary Hart for a long time in the primary campaign . It was only when journalists reported ambiguities in Hart's biography and Mondale asked (borrowed from a commercial) the question “ Where's the beef? ”(German:“ Where is the meat? ”) Pointed to the alleged insubstantiality of Hart's program, Mondale was able to prevail. New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro was nominated as the Democratic candidate for the office of vice president . She was the first female politician from a major party to run for vice-president. It was also noteworthy that civil rights activist Jesse Jackson was the first African American to win multiple primaries. The remaining Democratic candidates, including former astronaut and then Senator John Glenn , gave up early.

Election campaign

Major campaign themes included the growing US debt, inflation, the need for new taxes, and high spending on defense. The old age of Reagan on the one hand and Mondale's alleged political inexperience on the other were also topics of the election campaign. Mondale's announcement of a tax hike is widely seen as crucial to his all-out defeat.

Result

The election took place on November 6, 1984.

candidate Political party be right electors
number percent
Ronald Reagan republican 54.455.075 58.78% 525
Walter Mondale democrat 37,577,352 40.60% 13
David Bergland Libertarian 228.111 0.25% -
Gus Hall Communist Party 36,386 0.04% -

270 electors were necessary for the election to the president.

Mondale was only able to beat Reagan in his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia , winning just 13 electoral votes. With his 525 electoral votes, Ronald Reagan was able to significantly expand the lead he had in the 1980 presidential election . Since Alf Landon's defeat in the 1936 presidential election , no candidate from any of the major parties had won so few electoral votes.

literature

  • 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. 478-487 (= Chapter 52: Ronald Reagan's Reelection. ).
  • William E. Leuchtenburg : The 1984 Election in Historical Perspective. Baylor University Press, Waco 1986, ISBN 0-918954-45-2 .

Web links

Commons : 1984 US Presidential Election  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files