1980 Elections in the United States

The Event American politicians run for office

Date November 4, 1980

The 1980 elections brought about what came to be called the “Reagan Revolution.” Republican Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter to become president of the United States, and his party gained control of the Senate for the first time since 1958. The Democrats retained control of the House of Representatives, but the size of their majority was decreased.

Early in 1980, the Democratic presidential administration of Jimmy Carter appeared to be beleaguered on all fronts, domestic, economic, and foreign. Carter had been elected in 1976 on a pledge to control inflation and revive the U.S. economy. In the eyes of a large portion of the American public, he not only had failed to deliver on that promise, but also had allowed the situation to worsen over time. In 1979, Americans were taken hostage at their embassy in Iran, and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Carter’s ineffectual reactions to both events weakened his administration’s credibility, and as the hostage crisis and the Soviet-Afghani conflict both stretched into 1980, Americans began to feel that he was impotent in the face of world crises and did not properly understand the gravity of the global threats facing the United States. Carter’s problems involved not just a resurgent Republican Party, which seemed ready to leave behind the Watergate scandal and embark on a new direction, but also a determined challenge for his own party’s nomination from Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy . Kennedy had launched an aggressive media onslaught, branding the incumbent president as unelectable. He represented himself, by contrast, as able to recapture the lost legacy of his fallen brothers and to bring another era of Kennedy Camelot to the nation.

The Reagan Surge

Former California governor and film star Ronald Reagan had captured national attention as an attractive, articulate representative of the Republican Party’s conservative wing. He had stood for his party’s nomination on two prior occasions, in 1968 and 1976, only to fall short each time. In 1980, however, he seemed poised as the favorite to capture the prize that had eluded him—only his age appeared as a potential obstacle: Reagan was sixty-nine years old, which meant that, if elected, he would be the oldest president to assume the office. To get that far, he first had to defeat the other candidates competing for the Republican nomination, including former director of central intelligence George H. W. Bush ; two Illinois representatives, Philip Crane and John Bayard Anderson; former treasury secretary John B. Connally, Jr.; Senator Robert Dole of Kansas; and Tennessee senator Howard Baker.

John Sears, Reagan’s first campaign manager, did not see the need to exert great effort against what seemed to be a weak field. He generally limited his candidate’s appearances in Iowa, whose caucuses were the nation’s first event of the primary election season and the first test of strength for any individuals seeking their party’s nomination. Thus, in Iowa, Bush—who had never been elected to public office—stunned the nation by scoring an upset victory over Reagan. Abruptly abandoning Sears’s strategy of aloofness, which did not suit his gregarious temperament in any case, Reagan embarked on an extensive series of stumping tours throughout New Hampshire, which was the next battleground in the primary process. Reagan won the New Hampshire primary on February 26, 1980. Shortly thereafter, Sears was replaced by the more aggressive William J. Casey.

From that point on, Bush rapidly lost steam, especially after Reagan bested his rival in a televised debate, forging well ahead of the pack. Only Bush and Anderson could pose even a mild threat to Reagan’s chances for the nomination. At the Republican National Convention in Detroit (July 15-18), Reagan was nominated on the first ballot with 1,939 delegate votes. Anderson received 37 votes, and Bush got 13. Reagan then had to choose a vice presidential running mate, a choice he delayed until the last minute. Former president Gerald R. Ford of Michigan was initially placed at the top of the list. It was reasoned that Ford could provide the unifying link between the moderate and conservative wings of the party and help Reagan secure victories in certain significant midwestern states. Reagan attempted to convince Ford to run with him, but Ford asked for too much in return: He wanted to choose who would fill several significant cabinet posts. Bush, Reagan’s second choice, was offered the chance to run for vice president and accepted. The results of the convention and the party’s acceptance of Reagan’s conservative agenda did not satisfy John Anderson, who, as one of the last stalwarts of the Republicans’ liberal wing, bolted the party in disgust and continued to run for president as an independent candidate, ultimately garnering a significant number of votes for such a candidate.

Kennedy Versus the President

Most polls indicated that Ted Kennedy led substantially over President Carter when he officially entered the race in November of 1979. In the long run, though, Kennedy’s past—particularly the controversial Chappaquiddick incident of 1969—was dredged back up, damaging his credibility in the eyes of many Democratic voters. Carter thus regrouped to win the Iowa caucuses and most of the early primaries. Continued domestic unease and foreign policy disasters eroded Carter’s support, however, and Kennedy was able to win the New York primary. Thus, when the Democratic National Convention was held in New York City from August 10 to 14, the party was bitterly divided between the incumbent president and the senator from Massachusetts. Behind in the delegate count, Kennedy supporters proposed an “open convention” rule, whereby delegates would be released from their obligation to cast their first-ballot vote for the candidate who had won their state’s primary election. Such a rule would greatly have enhanced Kennedy’s chances of winning the party’s nomination. The motion was defeated, however, by a vote of 1,936 to 1,390. Carter was subsequently nominated with 2,129.02 votes to Kennedy’s 1,150.48 votes, but he had won at the cost of party unity. Walter Mondale was once again nominated as the vice presidential candidate.

“The Great Communicator’s” Victory

Almost immediately, the upbeat tone of the Reagan campaign struck a chord with rank-and-file voters. Reagan advocated implementing a radical conservative economic program (referred to by Bush during the primary contest as “Voodoo economics” and later dubbed “Reaganomics”), significantly limiting the scope of federal power, and taking a tough foreign policy stance against communism. He moved rapidly ahead in the polls. Vulnerable on both the foreign and the domestic fronts, Carter could only mount a negative campaign, denigrating conservative Republican ideas as being out of touch with the American mainstream and as potentially dangerous insofar as they could provoke nuclear conflict. This approach did not resonate with many voters, who were left with the impression that the president had been reduced to desperately flailing away at his opponent.

Carter’s initial reluctance to debate also cost him: In effect, he boycotted the September 21, 1980, debate in Baltimore, Maryland, by refusing to participate if independent candidate Anderson was allowed to appear. As a result, the first debate pitted Anderson against Reagan. Reagan coolly dominated the debate, decimating any hope that Anderson might have had for victory, and lunged further ahead in the polls. Reagan agreed to debate Carter one-on-one in Cleveland, Ohio, on October 28. Again, Reagan proved to be the better speaker, earning his nickname, the Great Communicator. He managed from the start both to aggrandize his own positions and to belittle Carter, who was unable to retake the initiative. Reagan projected an image of unflappable, calm reassurance. Carter, on the other hand, seemed angry and erratic.

It soon became clear that Carter had only one hope of victory, which was nicknamed by Reagan’s camp the “October surprise.” If the Iranian hostages were to be released in the final days before the election, it was generally believed that the resulting swell of good feeling for the Carter administration could easily have resulted in enough of a momentum shift to deliver Carter a second term. In the event, however, the hostages remained in captivity through election day, and Reagan won a landslide victory over the incumbent; winning the electoral vote, 489 to 49. The popular vote tallied 43,903,230 for Reagan and 35,480,115 for Carter. John Anderson received 5,719,850 popular votes and no electoral votes. In the end, though Anderson was considered to have performed well for an independent candidate, he did not do well enough to affect the final outcome. The Libertarian Party candidate, Ed Clark, received 921,128 votes, and Barry Commoner of the Citizens Party received 233,052 votes.

Congressional Elections

Republican advances in the congressional elections were no less spectacular: The party gained twelve seats in the Senate, for a total of fifty-three seats to the Democrats’ forty-six. Republicans were in the majority in the Senate for the first time in twenty-two years.

Incumbent Democrats fell like cut wheat, including some who had held significant leadership positions. The new Republican senators included Jeremiah Denton of Alabama, Frank H. Murkowski of Alaska, Paula Hawkins of Florida, Mack Mattingly of Georgia (who had narrowly defeated the long-serving Herman Talmadge), Steven D. Symms of Idaho, Dan Quayle of Indiana, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Warren B. Rudman of New Hampshire, John P. East of North Carolina, James Abdnor of South Dakota, Slade Gorton of Washington, and Bob Kasten of Wisconsin. Abdnor defeated George McGovern, the former 1972 Democratic presidential candidate, by nearly 19 percentage points; Quayle carried nearly 54 percent of the vote to oust veteran Birch Bayh; and Symms prevailed in a very close race over Frank Church.

In the House of Representatives, the Republicans gained 35 seats. The Democrats retained their majority in the lower house, but their advantage was cut to 242 versus 192 Republicans and 1 independent representative.

Impact

The term “Reagan Revolution” was used to describe the emphatic turnaround that began with the 1980 elections. After being dismissed by the majority of the American electorate as a fringe element in 1964, in 1980 conservative Republicans attained the glow of respectability. Ronald Reagan and his brand of conservatism were to dominate the U.S. political scene throughout the 1980’s and into the early 1990’s. For the first time, ethnic and suburban blue-collar and professional workers, who traditionally voted heavily Democratic, migrated in significant numbers to the Republican fold. These new so-called Reagan Democrats would help elect Republican presidents and congressional candidates in 1984 and 1988 and would remain a potent political force through the rest of the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1982. Provides Carter’s own account of the 1980 election and of his actions in office during the late 1970’s.

Drew, Elizabeth. Portrait of an Election: The 1980 Presidential Campaign. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981. Reasonably impartial rendering of the election, although the author expresses considerable disgust at the degree of negative campaigning and at the bitterness engendered by the Carter-Kennedy face-off.

Jordan, Hamilton. Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982. After-the-fact reminiscences of the White House chief of staff, written in diary form, in which he attempts to shed light on the many misfortunes that befell the Carter administration in 1980.

Ranney, Austin, ed. The American Elections of 1980. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Foreign Policy Research, 1981. Fine, detailed series of essays on nearly every facet of the elections. Contains excellent, relevant statistical tables.

Strober, Deborah Hart, and Gerald S. Strober. The Reagan Presidency: An Oral History of the Era. Rev. ed. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2003. Utilizes interviews with family members, campaign aides, and other participants to paint a picture of the circumstances behind the nomination struggle, the selection of George H. W. Bush as vice presidential running mate, and the actual head-to-head campaign against Jimmy Carter.