Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 1980. The Republican ticket of former California governor Ronald Reagan and former director of central intelligence George H. W. Bush defeated the Democratic ticket of incumbent president Jimmy Carter and vice president Walter Mondale, and the Independent ticket of Congressman John B. Anderson and former ambassador to Mexico Patrick Lucey in a landslide. Because of the rise of conservatism after Reagan's victory, many historians consider the election a political realignment.
Carter's unpopularity, his poor relations with Democratic leaders, and the poor economic conditions under his administration encouraged an unsuccessful intra-party challenge from Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. Meanwhile, the Republican primaries were contested between Reagan, former Central Intelligence Agency director George H. W. Bush, Illinois representative John B. Anderson, and several other candidates. All of Reagan's opponents had dropped out by the end of the primaries, and the Republicans nominated a ticket consisting of Reagan and Bush. Anderson entered the general election as an independent candidate with former Wisconsin governor Patrick Lucey as his running mate.
Reagan campaigned for increased defense spending, supply-side economic policies, and a balanced budget. His campaign was aided by Democratic dissatisfaction with Carter, the Iran hostage crisis, and a worsening economy marred by stagflation. Carter attacked Reagan as a dangerous right-wing extremist, and warned that Reagan would cut Medicare and Social Security. The Carter campaign was aided early on by the rally 'round the flag effect from the hostage crisis; as the crisis lasted to election day, it became a detriment.
Reagan won the election in a landslide with 489 Electoral College votes to Carter's 49, and 50.7% of the popular vote to Carter's 41.0%. Anderson won 6.6% of the popular vote and no electoral votes. The 1980 election was also the first U.S. presidential election in which women’s voter turnout rate surpassed men’s, with women voting at a slightly higher rate than men.
This was the second consecutive election in which an incumbent president was defeated and the first election since 1888 in which an incumbent Democratic president was defeated.
Background
Throughout the 1970s, the United States underwent a wrenching period of stagflation (low economic growth, high inflation, and interest rates), and intermittent energy crises. By October 1978, Iran—a major oil supplier to the United States at the time—was experiencing a major uprising that severely damaged its oil infrastructure and greatly weakened its capability to produce oil. In January 1979, shortly after Iran's leader Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country, Iranian opposition figure Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ended his 14-year exile in France and returned to Iran to establish an Islamic Republic, largely hostile to American interests and influence in the country. In the spring and summer of 1979, inflation was on the rise and various parts of the United States were experiencing energy shortages.
Carter was widely blamed for the return of the long gas lines in the summer of 1979 that were last seen just after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He planned on delivering his fifth major speech on energy, but he felt that the American people were no longer listening. Carter left for the presidential retreat of Camp David. "For more than a week, a veil of secrecy enveloped the proceedings. Dozens of prominent Democratic Party leaders—members of Congress, governors, labor leaders, academics and clergy—were summoned to the mountaintop retreat to confer with the beleaguered president." His pollster, Pat Caddell, told him that the American people simply faced a crisis of confidence because of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.; the Vietnam War; and Watergate. On July 15, 1979, Carter gave a nationally televised address in which he identified what he believed to be a "crisis of confidence" among the American people. This came to be known as his "Malaise speech", although Carter never used the word in the speech.
Many expected Senator Ted Kennedy to successfully challenge Carter in the upcoming Democratic primary. Kennedy's official announcement was scheduled for early November. A television interview with Roger Mudd of CBS a few days before the announcement went badly, however. Kennedy gave an "incoherent and repetitive" answer to the question of why he was running, and the polls, which showed him leading Carter by 58–25 in August now had him ahead 49–39. Kennedy was also politically scarred by the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident; the controversy had been a major reason for Kennedy's decision to not run for president in 1972 and 1976.
Meanwhile, Carter was given an opportunity for political redemption when the Khomeini regime again gained public attention and allowed the taking of 52 American hostages by a group of Islamist students and militants at the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. Carter's calm approach towards the handling of this crisis resulted in his approval ratings jump in the 60-percent range in some polls, due to a "rally round the flag" effect.
By the beginning of the election campaign, the prolonged Iran hostage crisis had sharpened public perceptions of a national crisis. On April 25, 1980, Carter's ability to use the hostage crisis to regain public acceptance eroded when his high risk attempt to rescue the hostages ended in disaster when eight servicemen were killed. The unsuccessful rescue attempt drew further skepticism towards his leadership skills.
Following the failed rescue attempt, Carter took overwhelming blame for the Iran hostage crisis, in which the followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini burned American flags and chanted anti-American slogans, paraded the captured American hostages in public, and burned Carter in effigy. Carter's critics saw him as an inept leader who had failed to solve the worsening economic problems at home. His supporters defended the president as a decent, well-intentioned man being unfairly criticized for problems that had been escalating for years.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979, Carter seized international leadership in rallying opposition. He cut off American grain sales, which hurt Soviet consumers and annoyed American farmers. In terms of prestige, the Soviets were deeply hurt by the large-scale boycott of their 1980 Summer Olympics. Furthermore, Carter began secret support of the rebel forces in Afghanistan that successfully tied down the Soviet army for a decade. The effect was to end détente and reopen the Cold War.
Nominations
Republican Party
Other major candidates
The following candidates were frequently interviewed by major broadcast networks and cable news channels, were listed in publicly published national polls, or had held a public office. Reagan received 7,709,793 votes in the primaries.
Former governor Ronald Reagan of California was the odds-on favorite to win his party's nomination for president after nearly beating incumbent president Gerald Ford just four years earlier. Reagan dominated the primaries early, driving from the field Senate minority leader Howard Baker from Tennessee, former governor John Connally of Texas, Senator Robert Dole from Kansas, Representative Phil Crane from Illinois, and Representative John Anderson from Illinois, who dropped out of the race to run as an Independent. George H. W. Bush from Texas posed the strongest challenge to Reagan with his victories in the Pennsylvania and Michigan primaries, but it was not enough to turn the tide. Reagan won the nomination on the first round at the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, Michigan, in July, then chose Bush (his top rival) as his running mate. Reagan, Bush, and Dole were the Republican nominees in the next four elections (Reagan in 1984, Bush in 1988 and 1992, and Dole in 1996).
Democratic Party
Other major candidates
The following candidates were frequently interviewed by major broadcast networks, were listed in published national polls, or had held public office. Carter received 10,043,016 votes in the primaries.
The three major Democratic candidates were incumbent president Jimmy Carter, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Governor Jerry Brown of California. Brown withdrew on April 2. Carter and Kennedy faced off in 34 primaries. Not counting the 1968 election in which Lyndon Johnson withdrew his candidacy, this was the most tumultuous primary race an elected incumbent president had encountered since William Howard Taft in 1912.
During the summer of 1980, there was a short-lived "Draft Muskie" movement; Secretary of State Edmund Muskie was seen as a favorable alternative to a deadlocked convention. One poll showed that Muskie would be a more popular alternative to Carter than Kennedy, implying that the attraction was not so much to Kennedy as to nominating someone other than Carter. Muskie was polling even with Reagan at the time, while Carter was seven points behind. Although the underground "Draft Muskie" campaign failed, it became a political legend.
After defeating Kennedy in 24 of 34 primaries, Carter entered the party's convention in New York in August with 60% of the delegates pledged to him on the first ballot. Still, Kennedy did not drop out. At the convention, after a last-ditch attempt by Kennedy to alter the rules to free delegates from their first-ballot pledges, Carter was renominated with 2,129 votes to Kennedy's 1,146. Vice President Walter Mondale was also renominated. In his acceptance speech, Carter warned that Reagan's conservatism posed a threat to world peace and progressive social welfare programs from the New Deal to the Great Society.
Other candidates
John B. Anderson was defeated in the Republican primaries, but entered the general election as an independent. He campaigned as a liberal Republican alternative to Reagan. Anderson's campaign appealed primarily to frustrated anti-Carter voters with Republican or Democratic allegiances. Anderson's running mate was Patrick Lucey, a Democratic former governor of Wisconsin and then ambassador to Mexico, appointed by President Carter.
The Libertarian Party nominated Ed Clark for president and David Koch for vice president. They were on the ballot in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The Libertarian Party platform was the only one that contained a plank advocating for the equal rights of homosexual men and women, as well as the only one to advocate "amnesty" for all illegal non-citizens.
The Citizens Party ran biologist Barry Commoner for president and Comanche Native American activist LaDonna Harris for vice president. The Commoner–Harris ticket was on the ballot in 29 states and Washington, D.C.
General election
Polling aggregation
The following graph depicts the standing of each candidate in the poll aggregators from July 1979 to November 1980.
Campaign
Reagan gained in former Democratic strongholds such as the South and white ethnics dubbed "Reagan Democrats", and exuded upbeat optimism. David Frum says Carter ran an attack-based campaign based on "despair and pessimism" which "cost him the election." Carter emphasized his record as a peacemaker, and said Reagan's election would threaten civil rights and social programs that stretched back to the New Deal. Reagan's platform also emphasized the importance of peace, as well as a prepared self-defense.
Immediately after the conclusion of the primaries, a Gallup poll held that Reagan was ahead, with 58% of voters upset by Carter's handling of the presidency. One analysis of the election has suggested that "Both Carter and Reagan were perceived negatively by a majority of the electorate." While the three leading candidates (Reagan, Anderson and Carter) were religious Christians, Carter had the most support of evangelical Christians according to a Gallup poll. However, in the end, Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority lobbying group is credited with giving Reagan two-thirds of the white evangelical vote. According to Carter: "that autumn [1980] a group headed by Jerry Falwell purchased $10 million in commercials on southern radio and TV to brand me as a traitor to the South and no longer a Christian."
Some Christians expressed skepticism of Reagan's background as a twice-married former Hollywood actor with a liberal abortion record and support for no-fault divorce as governor of California.
The election of 1980 was a key turning point in American politics. It signaled the new electoral power of the suburbs and the Sun Belt. Reagan's success as a conservative would initiate a realigning of the parties, as Rockefeller-style Republicans and conservative Democrats would either leave politics or change party affiliations through the 1980s and 1990s to leave the parties much more ideologically polarized. While during Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign, many voters saw his warnings about a too-powerful government as hyperbolic and only 30% of the electorate agreed that government was too powerful, by 1980 a majority of Americans believed that government held too much power.
Promises
Reagan promised a restoration of the nation's military strength, at the same time 60% of Americans polled felt defense spending was too low. Reagan also promised an end to "trust me government" and to restore economic health by implementing a supply-side economic policy. Reagan promised a balanced budget within three years (which he said would be "the beginning of the end of inflation"), accompanied by a 30% reduction in tax rates over those same years. With respect to the economy, Reagan famously said, "A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his." Reagan also criticized the "windfall profit tax" that Carter and Congress enacted that year in regards to domestic oil production and promised to attempt to repeal it as president. The tax was not a tax on profits, but on the difference between the price control-mandated price and the market price.