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1980 United States elections

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Field	Value
year	1980
type	Presidential election year
election_day	November 4
incumbent_president	Jimmy Carter (Democratic)
next_congress	[97th](97th-united-states-congress)
president_control	Republican gain
president_pv_margin	Republican +9.7%
president_candidate1	Ronald Reagan (R)
electoral_vote1	489
president_candidate2	Jimmy Carter (D)
electoral_vote2	49
president_map
president_map_caption	1980 presidential election results. Red denotes states won by Reagan, blue denotes states won by Carter. Numbers indicate the electoral votes won by each candidate.
senate_seats_contested	34 of 100 seats
senate_control	Republican gain
senate_net_change	Republican +12
senate_map
senate_map_caption	1980 Senate results
house_seats_contested	All 435 voting members
house_control	Democratic hold
house_pv_margin	Democratic +2.6%
house_net_change	Republican +34
house_map	[[File:1980 House Elections.png	400px]]
house_map_caption	1980 House of Representatives results
governor_seats_contested	15 (13 states, 2 territories)
governor_net_change	Republican +4
governor_map
governor_map_caption	1980 gubernatorial election results
Territorial races not shown

Territorial races not shown

Elections were held on Tuesday, November 4, 1980. Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a landslide. Republicans picked up seats in both chambers of Congress and won control of the Senate, though Democrats retained a majority in the House of Representatives. The election is sometimes referred to as part of the "Reagan Revolution", a conservative realignment in U.S. politics and marked the start of the Reagan Era.

Reagan defeated George H. W. Bush and other candidates in the 1980 Republican presidential primaries, while Carter fended off a challenge from Senator Ted Kennedy in the 1980 Democratic primaries. In the general election, Reagan won 489 of 538 electoral votes and 50.7 percent of the popular vote, while Carter won 41.0 percent of the popular vote and independent candidate John B. Anderson took 6.6 percent of the vote.

Republicans picked up twelve Senate seats to take control of a chamber of Congress for the first time since the 1954 elections. They picked up 34 seats in the House, but Democrats retained a comfortable majority in that chamber. In the gubernatorial elections, Republicans won a net gain of four seats. This was the first presidential election since 1964 that the winning candidate had coattails in the House and Senate. This was the last election until 2020 when a chamber of Congress changed hands in a presidential election, and the first to do so since 1952. The 97th Congress was also the first since the 72nd Congress after the 1930 elections to have each house controlled by a different party.

This marks the most recent of four occasions where a newly elected president entered office with a divided legislature, which also occurred in 1860, 1876, and 1884. 1876 is the only other occasion where the president's party held the Senate, but not the House. A divided Congress also occurred after the 1984 and 2012 elections.

Issues

Domestic issues

The United States in the 1970s underwent "stagflation"—a wrenching period of low economic growth, high inflation, and high interest rates and intermittent energy crises. These issues played a large role in the 1980 campaign.

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.

Foreign issues

Events such as the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan played a large role in the 1980 elections. America was perceived by many to be weakening as a world power while the Soviet Union was perceived to be strengthening and expanding.

At the time, 60% of Americans polled felt that United States defense spending was too low.

Federal elections

Presidential election

Main article: 1980 United States presidential election

Republican Ronald Reagan won the election in a landslide, receiving 489 electoral votes, defeating incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter, who received 49. Reagan received the highest number of electoral votes ever won by a non-incumbent presidential candidate.

Republican Congressman John B. Anderson, who ran as an independent, received 6.6% of the vote.

Congressional elections

Senate elections

Main article: 1980 United States Senate elections

The 34 seats of Class III of the United States Senate were up for election. Republicans won majority control of the Senate for the first time in 26 years, picking up 12 seats and losing none.

House of Representatives elections

Main article: 1980 United States House of Representatives elections

Elections were held for all 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives. Though Democrats won the nationwide popular vote by 2.6 percentage points, Republicans gained 34 seats. Nonetheless, Democrats retained a majority with 243 seats, compared to 193 seats held by Republicans.

State/territorial elections

Gubernatorial elections

Main article: 1980 United States gubernatorial elections

Thirteen of the fifty state governorships were up for election. Four state governorships changed hands from Democrat to Republican.

The territorial governorships of American Samoa and Puerto Rico were also up for election.

References

Jerry Lanson. (2008-11-06). "A historic victory. A changed nation. Now, can Obama deliver?". Christian Science Monitor.
"Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 4, 1980". U.S. House of Reps, Office of the Clerk.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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