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1972 United States presidential election

The 1972 United States presidential election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Incumbent Republican president Richard Nixon defeated Democratic U.S. senator George McGovern in a landslide victory. With 60.7% of the popular vote, Richard Nixon won the largest share of the popular vote for the Republican Party in any presidential election.

Nixon swept aside challenges from two Republican representatives in the Republican primaries to win renomination. McGovern, who had played a significant role in changing the Democratic nomination system after the 1968 presidential election, mobilized the anti-Vietnam War movement and other liberal supporters to win his party's nomination. Among the candidates he defeated were early front-runner Edmund Muskie, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey, governor George Wallace, and representative Shirley Chisholm.

Nixon emphasized the strong economy and his success in foreign affairs, while McGovern ran on a platform calling for an immediate end to the Vietnam War and the institution of a guaranteed minimum income. Nixon maintained a large lead in polling. Separately, Nixon's reelection committee broke into the Watergate complex to wiretap the Democratic National Committee's headquarters as part of the Watergate scandal. McGovern's general election campaign was damaged early on by revelations from his running mate Thomas Eagleton, as well as the perception that McGovern's platform was radical. Eagleton had undergone electroconvulsive therapy as a treatment for depression, and he was replaced by Sargent Shriver after only nineteen days on the ticket.

Nixon won the election in a landslide victory, taking 60.7% of the popular vote and carrying 49 states and becoming the first Republican to sweep the South, whereas McGovern took just 37.5% of the popular vote. Meanwhile, this marked the last time the Republican nominee carried Minnesota in a presidential election. This also made Nixon the first two-term vice president to be elected president twice. The 1972 election was the first since the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, further expanding the electorate.

Both Nixon and his vice president Spiro Agnew would resign from office within two years of the election. The latter resigned due to a bribery scandal in October 1973, and the former resigned in the face of likely impeachment and conviction as a result of the Watergate scandal in August 1974. Republican House Minority Leader Gerald Ford replaced Agnew as vice president in December 1973, and thus, replaced Nixon as president in August 1974. Ford remains the only person in American history to become president without winning an election for president or vice president.

Republican nomination
Republican candidates:
 * Richard Nixon, President of the United States from California
 * Pete McCloskey, Representative from California
 * John M. Ashbrook, Representative from Ohio

Primaries
Nixon was a popular incumbent president in 1972, as he was credited with opening the People's Republic of China as a result of his visit that year, and achieving détente with the Soviet Union. Polls showed that Nixon held a strong lead in the Republican primaries. He was challenged by two candidates: liberal Pete McCloskey from California, and conservative John Ashbrook from Ohio. McCloskey ran as an anti-war candidate, while Ashbrook opposed Nixon's détente policies towards China and the Soviet Union. In the New Hampshire primary, McCloskey garnered 19.8% of the vote to Nixon's 67.6%, with Ashbrook receiving 9.7%. Nixon won 1323 of the 1324 delegates to the Republican convention, with McCloskey receiving the vote of one delegate from New Mexico. Vice President Spiro Agnew was re-nominated by acclamation; while both the party's moderate wing and Nixon himself had wanted to replace him with a new running-mate (the moderates favoring Nelson Rockefeller, and Nixon favoring John Connally), it was ultimately concluded that such action would incur too great a risk of losing Agnew's base of conservative supporters.

Convention
Seven members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War were brought on federal charges for conspiring to disrupt the Republican convention. They were acquitted by a federal jury in Gainesville, Florida.

Democratic nomination
Overall, fifteen people declared their candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination. They were:
 * George McGovern, senator from South Dakota
 * Hubert Humphrey, senator from Minnesota, former vice president, and presidential nominee in 1968
 * George Wallace, Governor of Alabama
 * Edmund Muskie, senator from Maine, vice presidential nominee in 1968
 * Eugene J. McCarthy, former senator from Minnesota
 * Henry M. Jackson, senator from Washington
 * Shirley Chisholm, Representative of New York's 12th congressional district
 * Terry Sanford, former governor of North Carolina
 * John Lindsay, Mayor of New York City
 * Wilbur Mills, representative of Arkansas's 2nd congressional district
 * Vance Hartke, senator from Indiana
 * Fred Harris, senator from Oklahoma
 * Sam Yorty, Mayor of Los Angeles
 * Patsy Mink, representative of Hawaii's 2nd congressional district
 * Walter Fauntroy, Delegate from Washington, D. C.

Primaries
Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy, the youngest brother of late President John F. Kennedy and late United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was the favorite to win the 1972 nomination, but he announced he would not be a candidate. The favorite for the Democratic nomination then became Maine Senator Ed Muskie, the 1968 vice-presidential nominee. Muskie's momentum collapsed just prior to the New Hampshire primary, when the so-called "Canuck letter" was published in the Manchester Union-Leader. The letter, actually a forgery from Nixon's "dirty tricks" unit, claimed that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians – a remark likely to injure Muskie's support among the French-American population in northern New England. Subsequently, the paper published an attack on the character of Muskie's wife Jane, reporting that she drank and used off-color language during the campaign. Muskie made an emotional defense of his wife in a speech outside the newspaper's offices during a snowstorm. Though Muskie later stated that what had appeared to the press as tears were actually melted snowflakes, the press reported that Muskie broke down and cried, shattering the candidate's image as calm and reasoned.

Nearly two years before the election, South Dakota Senator George McGovern entered the race as an anti-war, progressive candidate. McGovern was able to pull together support from the anti-war movement and other grassroots support to win the nomination in a primary system he had played a significant part in designing.

On January 25, 1972, New York Representative Shirley Chisholm announced she would run, and became the first African-American woman to run for a major-party presidential nomination. Hawaii Representative Patsy Mink also announced she would run, and became the first Asian American person to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

On April 25, George McGovern won the Massachusetts primary. Two days later, journalist Robert Novak quoted a "Democratic senator", later revealed to be Thomas Eagleton, as saying: "The people don't know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion, and legalization of pot. Once middle America – Catholic middle America, in particular – finds this out, he's dead." The label stuck, and McGovern became known as the candidate of "amnesty, abortion, and acid". It became Humphrey's battle cry to stop McGovern—especially in the Nebraska primary.

Alabama Governor George Wallace, an infamous segregationist who ran on a third-party ticket in 1968, did well in the South (winning nearly every county in the Florida primary) and among alienated and dissatisfied voters in the North. What might have become a forceful campaign was cut short when Wallace was shot in an assassination attempt by Arthur Bremer on May 15. Wallace was struck by five bullets and left paralyzed from the waist down. The day after the assassination attempt, Wallace won the Michigan and Maryland primaries, but the shooting effectively ended his campaign, and he pulled out in July.

In the end, McGovern won the nomination by winning primaries through grassroots support, in spite of establishment opposition. McGovern had led a commission to re-design the Democratic nomination system after the divisive nomination struggle and convention of 1968. However, the new rules angered many prominent Democrats whose influence was marginalized, and those politicians refused to support McGovern's campaign (some even supporting Nixon instead), leaving the McGovern campaign at a significant disadvantage in funding, compared to Nixon. Some of the principles of the McGovern Commission have lasted throughout every subsequent nomination contest, but the Hunt Commission instituted the selection of superdelegates a decade later, in order to reduce the nomination chances of outsiders such as McGovern and Jimmy Carter.

Notable endorsements
• Edmund Muskie

• Former Governor of and Secretary of Commerce W. Averell Harriman from New York

• Senator Harold Hughes from Iowa

• Senator Birch Bayh from Indiana

• Senator Adlai Stevenson III from Illinois

• Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska

• Former Senator Stephen M. Young from Ohio

• Governor Milton Shapp of Pennsylvania

• Former Governor Michael DiSalle of Ohio

• Ohio State Treasurer Gertrude W. Donahey

• Astronaut John Glenn from Ohio

• George McGovern

• Senator Frank Church from Idaho

• George Wallace

• Former Governor Lester Maddox of Georgia

• Shirley Chisholm

• Representative Ron Dellums from California

• Feminist leader and author Betty Friedan

• Feminist leader, journalist, and DNC official Gloria Steinem

• Terry Sanford

• Former President Lyndon B. Johnson from Texas

• Henry M. Jackson

• Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia

1972 Democratic National Convention

Results:

 * George McGovern – 1864.95
 * Henry M. Jackson – 525
 * George Wallace – 381.7
 * Shirley Chisholm – 151.95
 * Terry Sanford – 77.5
 * Hubert Humphrey – 66.7
 * Wilbur Mills – 33.8
 * Edmund Muskie – 24.3
 * Ted Kennedy – 12.7
 * Sam Yorty – 10
 * Wayne Hays – 5
 * John Lindsay – 5
 * Fred Harris – 2
 * Eugene McCarthy – 2
 * Walter Mondale – 2
 * Ramsey Clark – 1
 * Walter Fauntroy – 1
 * Vance Hartke – 1
 * Harold Hughes – 1
 * Patsy Mink – 1

Vice presidential vote
Most polls showed McGovern running well behind incumbent President Richard Nixon, except when McGovern was paired with Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. McGovern and his campaign brain trust lobbied Kennedy heavily to accept the bid to be McGovern's running mate, but he continually refused their advances, and instead suggested U.S. Representative (and House Ways and Means Committee chairman) Wilbur Mills from Arkansas and Boston Mayor Kevin White. Offers were then made to Hubert Humphrey, Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff, and Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, all of whom turned it down. Finally, the vice presidential slot was offered to Senator Thomas Eagleton from Missouri, who accepted the offer.

With hundreds of delegates displeased with McGovern, the vote to ratify Eagleton's candidacy was chaotic, with at least three other candidates having their names put into nomination and votes scattered over 70 candidates. A grassroots attempt to displace Eagleton in favor of Texas state representative Frances Farenthold gained significant traction, though was ultimately unable to change the outcome of the vote.

The vice-presidential balloting went on so long that McGovern and Eagleton were forced to begin making their acceptance speeches at around 2 am, local time.

After the convention ended, it was discovered that Eagleton had undergone psychiatric electroshock therapy for depression and had concealed this information from McGovern. A Time magazine poll taken at the time found that 77 percent of the respondents said, "Eagleton's medical record would not affect their vote." Nonetheless, the press made frequent references to his "shock therapy", and McGovern feared that this would detract from his campaign platform. McGovern subsequently consulted confidentially with pre-eminent psychiatrists, including Eagleton's own doctors, who advised him that a recurrence of Eagleton's depression was possible and could endanger the country, should Eagleton become president. McGovern had initially claimed that he would back Eagleton "1000 percent", only to ask Eagleton to withdraw three days later. This perceived lack of conviction in sticking with his running mate was disastrous for the McGovern campaign.

McGovern later approached six prominent Democrats to run for vice president: Ted Kennedy, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Abraham Ribicoff, Larry O'Brien, and Reubin Askew. All six declined. Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law to John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy, former Ambassador to France, and former Director of the Peace Corps, later accepted. He was officially nominated by a special session of the Democratic National Committee. By this time, McGovern's poll ratings had plunged from 41 to 24 percent.

Third parties
The only major third party candidate in the 1972 election was conservative Republican Representative John G. Schmitz, who ran on the American Independent Party ticket (the party on whose ballot George Wallace ran in 1968). He was on the ballot in 32 states and received 1,099,482 votes. Unlike Wallace, however, he did not win a majority of votes cast in any state, and received no electoral votes, although he did finish ahead of McGovern in four of the most conservative Idaho counties. Schmitz's performance in archconservative Jefferson County was the best by a third-party Presidential candidate in any free or postbellum state county since 1936 when William Lemke reached over twenty-eight percent of the vote in the North Dakota counties of Burke, Sheridan and Hettinger. Schmitz was endorsed by fellow John Birch Society member Walter Brennan, who also served as finance chairman for his campaign.

John Hospers and Theodora "Tonie" Nathan of the newly formed Libertarian Party were on the ballot only in Colorado and Washington, but were official write-in candidates in four others, and received 3,674 votes, winning no states. However, they did receive one Electoral College vote from Virginia from a Republican faithless elector (see below). The Libertarian vice-presidential nominee Tonie Nathan became the first Jew and the first woman in U.S. history to receive an Electoral College vote.

Linda Jenness was nominated by the Socialist Workers Party, with Andrew Pulley as her running-mate. Benjamin Spock and Julius Hobson were nominated for president and vice-president, respectively, by the People's Party.

Campaign

McGovern ran on a platform of immediately ending the Vietnam War and instituting a radical guaranteed minimum incomes for the nation's poor. His campaign was harmed by his views during the primaries (which alienated many powerful Democrats), the perception that his foreign policy was too extreme, and the Eagleton debacle. With McGovern's campaign weakened by these factors, with the Republicans portraying McGovern as a radical left-wing extremist, Nixon led in the polls by large margins throughout the entire campaign. With an enormous fundraising advantage and a comfortable lead in the polls, Nixon concentrated on large rallies and focused speeches to closed, select audiences, leaving much of the retail campaigning to surrogates like Vice President Agnew. Nixon did not, by design, try to extend his coattails to Republican congressional or gubernatorial candidates, preferring to pad his own margin of victory.

Results
Nixon's percentage of the popular vote was only marginally less than Lyndon Johnson's record in the 1964 election, and his margin of victory was slightly larger. Nixon won a majority vote in 49 states, including McGovern's home state of South Dakota. Only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia voted for the challenger, resulting in an even more lopsided Electoral College tally. McGovern garnered only 37.5 percent of the national popular vote, the lowest share received by a Democratic Party nominee since John W. Davis won only 28.8 percent of the vote in the 1924 election. The only major party candidate since 1972 to receive less than 40 percent of the vote was Republican incumbent President George H. W. Bush who won 37.4 percent of the vote in the 1992 election, a race that (as in 1924) was complicated by a strong non-major-party vote. Nixon received the highest share of the popular vote for a Republican in history.

Although the McGovern campaign believed that its candidate had a better chance of defeating Nixon because of the new Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution that lowered the national voting age to 18 from 21, most of the youth vote went to Nixon. This was the first election in American history in which a Republican candidate carried every single Southern state, continuing the region's transformation from a Democratic bastion into a Republican stronghold as Arkansas was carried by a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in a century. By this time, all the Southern states, except Arkansas and Texas, had been carried by a Republican in either the previous election or the one in 1964 (although Republican candidates carried Texas in 1928, 1952 and 1956). As a result of this election, Massachusetts became the only state that Nixon did not carry in any of the three presidential elections in which he was a candidate. Notably, Nixon became the first Republican to ever win two terms in the White House without carrying Massachusetts at least once, and the same feat would later be duplicated by George W. Bush who won both the 2000 and 2004 elections without winning Massachusetts either time. This presidential election was the first since 1808 in which New York did not have the largest number of electors in the Electoral College, having fallen to 41 electors vs. California's 45. Additionally, through 2020 it remains the last one in which Minnesota was carried by the Republican candidate.

McGovern won a mere 130 counties, plus the District of Columbia and four county-equivalents in Alaska, easily the fewest counties won by any major-party presidential nominee since the advent of popular presidential elections. In nineteen states, McGovern failed to carry a single county; he carried a mere one county-equivalent in a further nine states, and just two counties in a further seven. In contrast to Walter Mondale's narrow 1984 win in Minnesota, McGovern comfortably did win Massachusetts, but lost every other state by no less than five percentage points, as well as 45 states by more than ten percentage points – the exceptions being Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and his home state of South Dakota. This election also made Nixon the second former vice president in American history to serve two terms back-to-back, after Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and 1804. As well as the only two-term Vice President to be elected President twice.

Since McGovern carried only one state, bumper stickers reading "Nixon 49 America 1", "Don't Blame Me, I'm From Massachusetts", and "Massachusetts: The One And Only" were popular for a short time in Massachusetts.

Nixon managed to win 18% of the African American vote (Gerald Ford would get 16% in 1976). He also remains the only Republican in modern times to threaten the oldest extant Democratic stronghold of South Texas: this is the last election when the Republicans have won Hidalgo or Dimmit counties, the only time Republicans have won La Salle County between William McKinley in 1900 and Donald Trump in 2020, and one of only two occasions since Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 that Republicans have gained a majority in Presidio County. More significantly, the 1972 election was the most recent time several highly populous urban counties – including Cook in Illinois, Orleans in Louisiana, Hennepin in Minnesota, Cuyahoga in Ohio, Durham in North Carolina, Queens in New York, and Prince George's in Maryland – have voted Republican.

The Wallace vote had also been crucial to Nixon being able to sweep the states that had narrowly held out against him in 1968 (Texas, Maryland, and West Virginia), as well as the states Wallace won himself (Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia). The pro-Wallace group of voters had only given AIP nominee John Schmitz a depressing 2.4% of its support, while 19.1% backed McGovern, and the majority 78.5% broke for Nixon.

Nixon, who became term-limited under the provisions of the Twenty-second Amendment as a result of his victory, became the first (and, as of 2023, only) presidential candidate to win a significant number of electoral votes in three presidential elections since the ratification of that Amendment. As of 2023, Nixon was the seventh of seven presidential nominees to win a significant number of electoral votes in at least three elections, the others being Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. He is the only Republican ever to do so.

The 520 electoral votes received by Nixon, added to the 301 electoral votes he received in 1968, and the 219 electoral votes he received in 1960, gave him the most total electoral votes received by any candidate who had been previously Vice President to become president (1,040) and the second largest number of electoral votes received by any candidate who was elected to the office of president behind Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1,876 total electoral votes.

Results by state

 * Legend

 For the first time since 1828, Maine allowed its electoral votes to be split between candidates. Two electoral votes were awarded to the winner of the statewide race and one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. This was the first time the Congressional District Method had been used since Michigan used it in 1892. Nixon won all four votes.

States that flipped from Democratic to Republican

 * Connecticut
 * Hawaii
 * Maine
 * Maryland
 * Michigan
 * Minnesota
 * New York
 * Pennsylvania
 * Rhode Island
 * Texas
 * Washington
 * West Virginia

States that flipped from American Independent to Republican

 * Georgia
 * Louisiana
 * Alabama
 * Mississippi
 * Arkansas

Close states
States where margin of victory was more than 5 percentage points, but less than 10 percentage points (43 electoral votes):

 * 1) Minnesota, 5.51% (95,923 votes)
 * 2) Rhode Island, 6.19% (25,738 votes)
 * 3) South Dakota, 8.63% (26,531 votes)
 * 4) Massachusetts, 8.97% (220,462 votes)
 * 5) Wisconsin, 9.67% (179,256 votes)

Tipping point states:
 * 1) Ohio, 21.56% (882,938 votes) (tipping point for a Nixon victory)
 * 2) Maine-1, 22.85% (50,360 votes) (tipping point for a McGovern victory)

Statistics
Counties with highest percentage of the vote (Republican)
 * 1)  Dade County, Georgia 93.45%
 * 2)  Glascock County, Georgia 93.38%
 * 3)  George County, Mississippi 92.90%
 * 4)  Holmes County, Florida 92.51%
 * 5)  Smith County, Mississippi 92.35%

Counties with highest percentage of the vote (Democratic)
 * 1)  Duval County, Texas 85.68%
 * 2)  Washington, D. C. 78.10%
 * 3)  Shannon County, South Dakota 77.34%
 * 4)  Greene County, Alabama 68.32%
 * 5)  Charles City County, Virginia 67.84%

Counties with highest percentage of the vote (Other)
 * 1)  Jefferson County, Idaho 27.51%
 * 2)  Lemhi County, Idaho 19.77%
 * 3)  Fremont County, Idaho 19.32%
 * 4)  Bonneville County, Idaho 18.97%
 * 5)  Madison County, Idaho 17.04%

Voter demographics
Nixon won 36 percent of the Democratic vote, according to an exit poll conducted for CBS News by George Fine Research, Inc. This represents more than twice the percentage of voters who typically defect from their party in presidential elections. Nixon also became the first Republican presidential candidate in American history to win the Roman Catholic vote (53–46), and the first in recent history to win the blue-collar vote, which he won by a 5-to-4 margin. McGovern narrowly won the union vote (50–48), though this difference was within the survey's margin of error of 2 percentage points. McGovern also narrowly won the youth vote (i. e., those aged 18 to 24) 52–46, a narrower margin than many of his strategists had predicted. Early on, the McGovern campaign also significantly over-estimated the number of young people who would vote in the election: They predicted that 18 million would have voted in total, but exit polls indicate that the actual number was about 12 million. McGovern did win comfortably among both African-American and Jewish voters, but by somewhat smaller margins than usual for a Democratic candidate. McGovern won the African American vote by 82% to Nixon's 18%.

Aftermath
On June 17, 1972, five months before election day, five men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel in Washington, D. C.; the resulting investigation led to the revelation of attempted cover-ups of the break-in within the Nixon administration. What became known as the Watergate scandal eroded President Nixon's public and political support in his second term, and he resigned on August 9, 1974, in the face of probable impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal from office by the Senate.

As part of the continuing Watergate investigation in 1974–1975, federal prosecutors offered companies that had given illegal campaign contributions to President Nixon's re-election campaign lenient sentences if they came forward. Many companies complied, including Northrop Grumman, 3M, American Airlines, and Braniff Airlines. By 1976, prosecutors had convicted 18 American corporations of contributing illegally to Nixon's campaign.

Despite this election delivering Nixon's greatest electoral triumph, Nixon later wrote in his memoirs that "it was one of the most frustrating and in many ways the least satisfying of all".

Bibliography and further reading

 * Alexander, Herbert E.  Financing the 1972 Election (1976) online
 * Hofstetter, C. Richard. Bias in the news: Network television coverage of the 1972 election campaign (Ohio State University Press, 1976) online
 * Johnstone, Andrew, and Andrew Priest, eds. US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy: Candidates, Campaigns, and Global Politics from FDR to Bill Clinton (2017) pp 203–228. online
 * Miller, Arthur H., et al. "A majority party in disarray: Policy polarization in the 1972 election." American Political Science Review 70.3 (1976): 753–778; widely cited; online
 * Perry, James M. Us & them: how the press covered the 1972 election (1973) online
 * Simons, Herbert W., James W. Chesebro, and C. Jack Orr. "A movement perspective on the 1972 presidential election." Quarterly Journal of Speech 59.2 (1973): 168–179. online
 * Trent, Judith S., and Jimmie D. Trent. "The rhetoric of the challenger: George Stanley McGovern." Communication Studies 25.1 (1974): 11–18.
 * Perry, James M. Us & them: how the press covered the 1972 election (1973) online
 * Simons, Herbert W., James W. Chesebro, and C. Jack Orr. "A movement perspective on the 1972 presidential election." Quarterly Journal of Speech 59.2 (1973): 168–179. online
 * Trent, Judith S., and Jimmie D. Trent. "The rhetoric of the challenger: George Stanley McGovern." Communication Studies 25.1 (1974): 11–18.
 * Trent, Judith S., and Jimmie D. Trent. "The rhetoric of the challenger: George Stanley McGovern." Communication Studies 25.1 (1974): 11–18.


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1976 United States presidential election

The 1976 United States presidential election was the 48th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1976. Democrat Jimmy Carter, former Governor of Georgia, defeated incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford in a narrow victory. This was the first presidential election since 1932 in which the incumbent was defeated, as well as the only Democratic victory of the six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988.

Ford ascended to the presidency when Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which badly damaged the Republican Party and its electoral prospects. Ford promised to continue Nixon's political agenda and govern as a moderate Republican, causing considerable backlash from the conservative wing of his party. This spurred former California governor Ronald Reagan to mount a significant challenge against him in the Republican primaries, in which Ford narrowly prevailed. Carter was unknown outside of his home state of Georgia at the start of the Democratic primaries, but he emerged as the front-runner after his victories in the first set of primaries. Campaigning as a political moderate within his own party and as a Washington outsider, Carter defeated numerous opponents to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Ford pursued a "Rose Garden strategy" in which he sought to portray himself as an experienced leader focused on fulfilling his role as chief executive. On the other hand, Carter emphasized his status as a reformer who was "untainted" by Washington. Saddled with a poor economy, the fall of South Vietnam, and the political fallout from the Watergate Scandal, including his unpopular pardon of Richard Nixon, Ford trailed by a wide margin in polls taken after Carter's formal nomination in July 1976. Ford's polling rebounded after a strong performance in the first presidential debate, and the race was close on election day.

Carter won a majority of the popular and electoral votes. He was able to carry several Midwestern and Northeastern swing states, as well as most states in the Democratic-dominated region of the South. Ford dominated the Western states. Carter's victory at the polls was due in part to the backlash against the Watergate scandal that still was deeply hurting Republican candidates. Ford became the only vice-president to become president and subsequently fail to win election for a term in his own right.

As of 2020, this is also the last election in which the Democratic candidate won the majority of states in the South, carrying the states of Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas (mainly due to Carter's southern roots), and the most recent election in which the losing candidate carried more states than the winning candidate. This is the only election in which California voted Republican while Ohio voted Democrat.

Since the death of George McGovern in 2012, this is the earliest election where at least one of the major party nominees for president (Carter) or vice president is still alive (Ford died in 2006 and both Mondale and Dole died in 2021).

This is the only election in which all 4 major presidential and vice presidential candidates would be their party's nominee for president and lose. In addition to Ford losing this election, Carter would lose reelection to Reagan in 1980, Mondale would lose to President Reagan in 1984, and Dole would lose to President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Democratic Party
The surprise winner of the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination was Jimmy Carter, a former state senator and governor of Georgia. When the primaries began, Carter was little-known at the national level, and many political pundits regarded a number of better-known candidates, such as Senator Henry M. Jackson from Washington, Representative Morris Udall from Arizona, Governor George Wallace of Alabama, and California Governor Jerry Brown, as the favorites for the nomination. However, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Carter realized that his status as a Washington outsider, political centrist, and moderate reformer could give him an advantage over his better-known establishment rivals. Carter also took advantage of the record number of state primaries and caucuses in 1976, to eliminate his better-known rivals one-by-one.

Henry M. Jackson made a fateful decision not to compete in the early Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, which Jimmy Carter won after liberals split their votes among four other candidates. Though Jackson went on to win the Massachusetts and New York primaries, he was forced to quit the race on May 1, after losing the critical Pennsylvania primary to Carter by twelve percentage points. Carter then defeated Governor Wallace, his main conservative challenger, by a wide margin in the North Carolina primary, thus forcing Wallace to end his campaign. Representative Udall, a liberal, then became Carter's main challenger. He finished second to Carter in the New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New York, Michigan, South Dakota, and Ohio primaries, and won the caucuses in his home state of Arizona, while running even with Carter in the New Mexico caucuses. However, the fact that Udall finished second to Carter in most of these races meant that Carter steadily accumulated more delegates for the nomination than he did.

As Carter closed in on the nomination, an "ABC" ("Anybody But Carter") movement started among Northern and Western liberal Democrats who worried that Carter's Southern upbringing would make him too conservative for the Democratic Party. The leaders of the "ABC" movement, Idaho Senator Frank Church and California Governor Jerry Brown, both announced their candidacies for the Democratic nomination, and defeated Carter in several late primaries. However, their campaigns started too late to prevent Carter from gathering the remaining delegates he needed to capture the nomination.

By June 1976, Carter had captured more than enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination. At the 1976 Democratic National Convention, Carter easily won the nomination on the first ballot; Udall finished in second place. Carter then chose Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, a liberal, as his running mate.

Republican Party
The contest for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1976 was between two serious candidates: incumbent president Gerald Ford, a member of the party's moderate wing, and former governor of California Ronald Reagan, a member of the party's conservative wing. The presidential primary campaign between the two men was hard-fought and relatively even; by the start of the Republican Convention in August 1976, the race for the nomination was still too close to call. Ford defeated Reagan by a narrow margin on the first ballot at the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, and chose Senator Bob Dole from Kansas as his running mate in the place of incumbent vice president Nelson Rockefeller, who had announced the previous year that he was not interested in being considered for the vice presidential nomination. The 1976 Republican Convention was the last political convention to open with the presidential nomination still being undecided until the actual balloting at the convention.

Others

 * Roger MacBride, who had gained fame in the 1972 election as a faithless elector, ran as the nominee of the Libertarian Party.
 * Eugene McCarthy, a former Democratic Senator from Minnesota, ran as an independent candidate.
 * Ben Bubar, Prohibition Party nominee.
 * Frank Zeidler, former mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ran as the nominee of Socialist Party USA, which was founded in 1973 in a split with Socialist Party of America.
 * Gus Hall, four-time Communist Party candidate
 * Lester Maddox, the former Democratic Governor of Georgia (and Lieutenant Governor under Carter), ran as the nominee of the American Independent Party

Fall campaign
One of the advantages Ford held over Carter as the general election campaign began was his presidential privilege to preside over events celebrating the United States Bicentennial; this often resulted in favorable publicity for Ford. These included the Washington, D. C., fireworks display on the Fourth of July, which was televised nationally. On July 7, 1976, the President and First Lady served as hosts at a White House state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of the United Kingdom, which was televised on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network. These events were part of Ford's "Rose Garden" strategy to win the election, meaning that instead of appearing as a typical politician, Ford presented himself as a "tested leader" who was busily fulfilling the role of national leader and chief executive. Not until October did Ford leave the White House to actively campaign across the nation.

Carter ran as a reformer who was "untainted" by Washington political scandals, which many voters found attractive in the wake of the Watergate scandal that had led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. Ford, although personally unconnected with Watergate, was seen by many as too close to the discredited Nixon administration, especially after he granted Nixon a presidential pardon for any crimes he might have committed during his term of office. Ford's pardon of Nixon caused his popularity, as measured by public opinion polls, to plummet. Ford's refusal to explain his reasons for pardoning Nixon publicly (he would do so in his memoirs several years later), also hurt his image.

Ford unsuccessfully asked Congress to end the 1950s-era price controls on natural gas, which had caused a dwindling of American natural gas reserves after the 1973 oil crisis. Carter stated during his campaign that he opposed the ending of the price controls and thought such a move would be "disastrous".

After the Democratic National Convention, Carter held a 33-point lead over Ford in the polls. However, as the campaign continued, the race greatly tightened. During the campaign Playboy magazine published a controversial interview with Carter; in the interview, Carter admitted to having "lusted in my heart" for women other than his wife and used the word "screw," which cut into his support among women and evangelical Christians. On September 23, Ford performed well in what was the first televised presidential debate since 1960. Polls taken after the debate showed that most viewers felt that Ford was the winner. Carter was also hurt by Ford's charges that he lacked the necessary experience to be an effective national leader and that he was vague on many issues.

However, Ford also committed a costly blunder in the campaign that halted his momentum. During the second presidential debate on October 6, Ford stumbled when he asserted that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration". He added that he did not "believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union", and made the same claim with regard to Yugoslavia and Romania (Yugoslavia was not a Warsaw Pact member). Ford refused to retract his statement for almost a week after the debate, causing his surge in the polls to stall and allowing Carter to maintain a slight lead in the polls.

A vice-presidential debate, the first formal one of its kind, between Bob Dole and Walter Mondale also hurt the Republican ticket when Dole asserted that military unpreparedness on the part of Democratic presidents was responsible for all of the wars the U.S. had fought in the 20th century. Dole, a World War II veteran, noted that in every 20th-century war, from World War I to the Vietnam War, a Democrat had been president. Dole then pointed out that the number of U.S. casualties in "Democrat wars" was roughly equal to the population of Detroit. Many voters felt that Dole's criticism was unfairly harsh, and that his dispassionate delivery made him seem cold. Years later, Dole would remark that he regretted the comment, believing that it had hurt the Republican ticket. One factor that did help Ford in the closing days of the campaign was a series of popular television appearances he did with Joe Garagiola, a retired baseball player for the St. Louis Cardinals and a well-known announcer for NBC Sports. Garagiola and Ford appeared in a number of shows in several large cities. During the show, Garagiola would ask Ford questions about his life and beliefs; the shows were so informal, relaxed, and laid-back that some television critics labelled them the "Joe and Jerry Show". Ford and Garagiola obviously enjoyed one another's company, and they remained friends after the election was over.

Presidential debates
There were three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate during the 1976 general election.

Results
Despite his campaign's blunders, Ford managed to close the remaining gap in the polls, and by election day, the race was judged to be even. It took most of that night and the following morning to determine the winner. It was not until 3:30 am EST, that the NBC television network was able to declare that Carter had carried Mississippi and had thus accumulated more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win (seconds later, ABC News also declared Carter the winner, based on projections for Carter in Wisconsin and Hawaii, while CBS News announced Carter's victory at 3:45 am). Carter defeated Ford by two percentage points in the national popular vote.

The electoral vote was the closest since 1916; Carter carried 23 states, with 297 electoral votes, while Ford won 27 states, with 240 electoral votes (one elector, future state Senator Mike Padden from Washington state, pledged to Ford, voted for Reagan ). Carter's victory came primarily from his near-sweep of the South (he lost only Virginia and Oklahoma), and his narrow victories in large Northern states such as New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Ford did well in the West, carrying every state in that region, except for Hawaii. The most tightly contested state in the election was Oregon, which Ford won by under 2,000 votes.

By percentage of the vote, the states that secured Carter's victory were Wisconsin (1.68% margin) and Ohio (.27% margin). Had Ford won these states and all other states he carried, he would have won the presidency. The 27 states he won were, and still are, the most states ever carried by a losing candidate for president. Had Ford won the election, the provisions of the 22nd amendment would have disqualified him from running in 1980, as he served more than two years of Nixon's second term.

Records
Carter was the first Democratic presidential nominee since John F. Kennedy in 1960 to carry states in the Deep South (Bill Clinton was the only Democrat since 1976 to carry more than one state from the Deep South, doing so in 1992), and the only one since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 to carry a majority of all southern states. Carter performed very strongly in his home state of Georgia, carrying 66.7% of the vote and every county in the state. His winning of 23 states was only the second time in history that the winner of the election won fewer than half the states (after 1960). His 50.1% of the vote was the only time since 1964 that a Democrat managed to obtain an absolute majority of the popular vote in a presidential election, until Barack Obama won 52.9% of the vote in 2008. Carter is one of six Democrats since the American Civil War to obtain an absolute majority of the popular vote, the others being Samuel J. Tilden, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

This election represents the last time to date that Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina would vote Democratic, and the last time North Carolina would vote Democratic until 2008, as well as the last time Florida voted Democratic until 1996, and the last time Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee voted Democratic until 1992.

This election was the last time that a Democrat won the presidency without winning a number of modern blue states and swing states, specifically California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. This is the only time a Democrat has won without New Mexico, as well as the only time it voted for a candidate who lost the popular vote. Similarly, it is one of only three instances in which a Democrat won without Nevada (the others being the two elections of Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892). And the Democrats did not win without Iowa again until 2020.

It was the first time in exactly 100 years (since 1876) when Florida and Virginia supported different candidates, and the first time since Oklahoma statehood in 1907 when Oklahoma and Tennessee did so.

As Carter won about 319 more counties than Ford, this election would mark the last time a Democrat won a majority of counties.

Statistics
Source (Popular Vote):

Source (Electoral Vote):

Results by state
Source:

This election represents the second time that the winning candidate has received a majority of the electoral votes while the second-place candidate carried a majority of the states. It had previously happened in the 1960 election. The "margin" column shows the difference between the two leading candidates, and the "swing" column shows the margin swing from the respective party's nominee from 1972 to 1976.

Maine allowed its electoral votes to be split between candidates. Two electoral votes were awarded to the winner of the statewide race and one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. Ford won all four votes.

States that flipped from Republican to Democratic

 * Alabama
 * Arkansas
 * Delaware
 * Florida
 * Georgia
 * Hawaii
 * Kentucky
 * Louisiana
 * Maryland
 * Minnesota
 * Mississippi
 * Missouri
 * New York
 * North Carolina
 * Ohio
 * Pennsylvania
 * Rhode Island
 * South Carolina
 * Tennessee
 * Texas
 * West Virginia
 * Wisconsin

Close states
States where margin of victory was under 1% (35 electoral votes):
 * 1) Oregon, 0.16% (1,713 votes)
 * 2) Ohio, 0.27% (11,116 votes)
 * 3) Maine's 2nd Congressional District, 0.28% (620 votes)
 * 4) Maine, 0.84% (4,041 votes)

States where margin of victory was under 5% (264 electoral votes):
 * 1) Iowa, 1.01% (12,932 votes)
 * 2) Oklahoma, 1.21% (13,266 votes)
 * 3) Virginia, 1.34% (22,658 votes)
 * 4) Maine's 1st Congressional District, 1.36% (3,421 votes)
 * 5) South Dakota, 1.48% (4,437 votes)
 * 6) Wisconsin, 1.68% (35,245 votes) (tipping point state)
 * 7) California, 1.78% (139,960 votes)
 * 8) Mississippi, 1.88% (14,463 votes)
 * 9) Illinois, 1.97% (92,974 votes)
 * 10) New Jersey, 2.16% (65,035 votes)
 * 11) New Mexico, 2.47% (10,271 votes)
 * 12) Hawaii, 2.53% (7,372 votes)
 * 13) Pennsylvania, 2.66% (123,073 votes)
 * 14) Texas, 3.17% (129,019 votes)
 * 15) Missouri, 3.63% (70,944 votes)
 * 16) Washington, 3.88% (60,409 votes)
 * 17) Nevada, 4.36% (8,794 votes)
 * 18) New York, 4.43% (288,767 votes)

States where margin of victory was more than 5%, but less than 10% (105 electoral votes):
 * 1) Connecticut, 5.16% (71,366 votes)
 * 2) Florida, 5.29% (166,469 votes)
 * 3) Michigan, 5.39% (197,028 votes)
 * 4) Delaware, 5.41% (12,765 votes)
 * 5) Louisiana, 5.78% (73,919 votes)
 * 6) North Dakota, 5.86% (17,392 votes)
 * 7) Maryland, 6.08% (86,951 votes)
 * 8) Kentucky, 7.18% (83,865 votes)
 * 9) Montana, 7.44% (24,444 votes)
 * 10) Kansas, 7.55% (72,331 votes)
 * 11) Indiana, 7.62% (169,244 votes)

Statistics
Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Democratic)
 * 1)  Banks County, Georgia 87.85%
 * 2)  Starr County, Texas 87.25%
 * 3)  Brantley County, Georgia 86.50%
 * 4)  Duval County, Texas 86.36%
 * 5)  Wilcox County, Georgia 86.15%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Republican)
 * 1)  Jackson County, Kentucky 79.80%
 * 2)  Owsley County, Kentucky 77.03%
 * 3)  Hooker County, Nebraska 76.35%
 * 4)  Ottawa County, Michigan 74.12%
 * 5)  Arthur County, Nebraska 73.66%

Voter demographics
Source: CBS News/New York Times interviews with 12,782 voters as they left the polls, as reported in The New York Times, November 9, 1980, p. 28, and in further analysis. The 1976 data are from CBS News interviews.

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text:
1980 United States presidential election

The 1980 United States presidential election was the 49th quadrennial presidential election, held on November 4, 1980. The Republican nominee, former California governor Ronald Reagan, defeated incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory.

Carter's unpopularity and poor relations with Democratic leaders encouraged an unsuccessful intra-party challenge from Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. Meanwhile, the Republican primaries were contested between former California Governor Ronald 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 Patrick Lucey, former Wisconsin governor, 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, but 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. Due to the rise of conservatism following Reagan's victory, historians have considered the election a political realignment that began with Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in 1964. To date, this is the most recent election in which an incumbent Democratic president was not reelected and the only time that a Republican nominee defeated a Democratic incumbent in both the popular and the electoral vote.

Background
Throughout the 1970s, the United States underwent a wrenching period of 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 opposition forces in Afghanistan that successfully tied down the Soviet army for a decade. The effect was to end détente and reopen the Cold War.

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 would all go on to be the nominees in the next four elections. (Reagan in 1984, Bush in 1988 and 1992, and Dole in 1996).

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 in early 1980 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 that an elected incumbent president had encountered since President Taft, during the highly contentious election of 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 the fact that he was not Carter. Muskie was polling even with Ronald 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 percent of the delegates pledged to him on the first ballot. Still, Kennedy refused to drop out. At the convention, after a futile 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 1,146 for Kennedy. 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 candidate. He campaigned as a liberal Republican alternative to Reagan's conservatism. Anderson's campaign appealed primarily to frustrated anti-Carter voters from Republican and Democratic backgrounds. 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 as well as Washington, D.C. The Libertarian Party platform was the only political party in 1980 to contain a plank advocating for the equal rights of homosexual men and women as well as the only party platform to advocate explicitly for "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 twenty-nine states and in the District of Columbia.

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."

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.

On the issue of women's rights there was much division, with many feminists frustrated with Carter, the only major-party candidate who supported the Equal Rights Amendment. After a bitter Convention fight between Republican feminists and antifeminists the Republican Party dropped their forty-year endorsement of the ERA. Reagan, however, announced his dedication to women's rights and his intention to, if elected, appoint women to his cabinet and the first female justice to the Supreme Court. He also pledged to work with all 50 state governors to combat discrimination against women and to equalize federal laws as an alternative to the ERA. Reagan was convinced to give an endorsement of women's rights in his nomination acceptance speech.

Carter was criticized by his own aides for not having a "grand plan" for the recovery of the economy, nor did he ever make any campaign promises; he often criticized Reagan's economic recovery plan, but did not create one of his own in response.

Events
In August, after the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan gave a campaign speech at the annual Neshoba County Fair on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. He was the first presidential candidate ever to campaign at the fair. Reagan famously announced, "Programs like education and others should be turned back to the states and local communities with the tax sources to fund them. I believe in states' rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can at the community level and the private level." Reagan also stated, "I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment." He went on to promise to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them." President Carter criticized Reagan for injecting "hate and racism" by the "rebirth of code words like 'states' rights'". Two days later, Reagan appeared at the Urban League convention in New York, where he said, "I am committed to the protection and enforcement of the civil rights of black Americans. This commitment is interwoven into every phase of the plans I will propose." He then said that he would develop "enterprise zones" to help with urban renewal.

The media's main criticism of Reagan centered on his gaffes. When Carter kicked off his general election campaign in Tuscumbia, Reagan—referring to the Southern U.S. as a whole—claimed that Carter had begun his campaign in the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. In doing so, Reagan seemed to insinuate that the KKK represented the South, which caused many Southern governors to denounce Reagan's remarks. Additionally, Reagan was widely ridiculed by Democrats for saying that trees caused pollution; he later said that he meant only certain types of pollution and his remarks had been misquoted.

Meanwhile, Carter was burdened by a continued weak economy and the Iran hostage crisis. Inflation, high interest rates, and unemployment continued through the course of the campaign, and the ongoing hostage crisis in Iran became, according to David Frum in How We Got Here: The '70s, a symbol of American impotence during the Carter years. John Anderson's independent candidacy, aimed at eliciting support from liberals, was also seen as hurting Carter more than Reagan, especially in reliably Democratic states such as Massachusetts and New York.

Presidential debates
The League of Women Voters, which had sponsored the 1976 Ford/Carter debate series, announced that it would do so again for the next cycle in the spring of 1979. Carter steadfastly refused to participate in a debate if Anderson was included, and Reagan refused to debate without him. A League-sponsored debate was held on September 21, 1980, in the Baltimore Convention Center. Of Carter's refusal to debate, Reagan said: "He [Carter] knows that he couldn't win a debate even if it were held in the Rose Garden before an audience of Administration officials with the questions being asked by Jody Powell". Anderson, who many thought would handily dispatch Reagan, managed only a narrow win, according to many in the media at that time, with Reagan putting up a much stronger performance than expected. Despite the narrow win in the debate, Anderson, who had been as high as 20% in some polls, and at the time of the debate was over 10%, dropped to about 5% soon after. Anderson failed to substantively engage Reagan enough on their social issue differences and on Reagan's advocation of supply-side economics. Instead, Anderson started off by criticizing Carter: "Governor Reagan is not responsible for what has happened over the last four years, nor am I. The man who should be here tonight to respond to those charges chose not to attend," to which Reagan added: "It's a shame now that there are only two of us here debating, because the two that are here are in more agreement than disagreement." In one moment in the debate, Reagan commented on a rumor that Anderson had invited Senator Ted Kennedy to be his running mate by asking the candidate directly, "John, would you really prefer Teddy Kennedy to me?"

As September turned into October, the situation remained essentially the same. Reagan insisted Anderson be allowed to participate in a three-way debate, while Carter remained steadfastly opposed to this. As the standoff continued, the second debate was canceled, as was the vice presidential debate.

With two weeks to go to the election, the Reagan campaign decided at that point that the best thing to do was to accede to all of President Carter's demands. The final debate, featuring only Carter and Reagan, was rescheduled for October 28 in Cleveland, Ohio. The showdown ranked among the highest ratings of any television program in the previous decade. Debate topics included the Iranian hostage crisis and nuclear arms. Carter's campaign sought to portray Reagan as a reckless "war hawk", as well as a "dangerous right-wing radical". But it was President Carter's reference to his consultation with 12-year-old daughter Amy concerning nuclear weapons policy that became the focus of post-debate analysis and fodder for late-night television jokes. President Carter said he had asked Amy what the most important issue in that election was and she said, "the control of nuclear arms." A famous political cartoon, published the day after Reagan's landslide victory, showed Amy Carter sitting in Jimmy's lap with her shoulders shrugged asking "the economy? the hostage crisis?"

When President Carter criticized Reagan's record, which included voting against Medicare and Social Security benefits, former Governor Reagan audibly sighed and replied: "There you go again".

In his closing remarks, Reagan asked viewers: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago? And if you answer all of those questions 'yes', why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to whom you will vote for. If you don't agree, if you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have".

After trailing Carter by eight points among registered voters (and by three points among likely voters) right before their debate, Reagan moved into a three-point lead among likely voters immediately afterward.

Endorsements
In September 1980, former Watergate scandal prosecutor Leon Jaworski accepted a position as honorary chairman of Democrats for Reagan. Five months earlier, Jaworski had harshly criticized Reagan as an "extremist"; he said after accepting the chairmanship, "I would rather have a competent extremist than an incompetent moderate."

Former Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota (who in 1968 had challenged Lyndon B. Johnson from the left, causing the then-President to all but abdicate) endorsed Reagan.

Three days before the election, the National Rifle Association of America endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in its history, backing Reagan. Reagan had received the California Rifle and Pistol Association's Outstanding Public Service Award. Carter had appointed Abner J. Mikva, a fervent proponent of gun control, to a federal judgeship and had supported the Alaska Lands Bill, closing 40000000 acre to hunting.

General election endorsements
Anderson had received endorsements from:
 * Former officeholders
 * Former Representative (Arizona's 2nd congressional district) and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall (D-AZ)
 * Current and former state and local officials and party officeholders
 * Massachusetts

 * Middlesex County Sheriff John J. Buckley (D-MA)
 * Former Massachusetts State Representative Francis W. Hatch Jr. (R-MA)
 * Former Massachusetts Republican Party chairman Josiah Spaulding (R-MA)
 * Celebrities, political activists, and political commentators
 * Band The Cars
 * Actor Stockard Channing
 * Band Cheap Trick
 * Screenwriter Norman Lear
 * Actress Dina Merrill
 * Actor Paul Newman
 * Actor Cliff Robertson
 * Band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
 * Actress Joanne Woodward
 * Newspapers
 * The Hutchinson News in Hutchinson, Kansas
 * The Burlington Free Press in Burlington, VT

Carter had received endorsements from:
 * Newspapers
 * The Des Moines Register in Des Moines, Iowa
 * The Penn State Daily Collegian in State College, Pennsylvania

Commoner had received endorsements from:
 * Celebrities, political activists, and political commentators
 * Montgomery County precinct committeeman and Consumer Party Auditor General candidate Darcy Richardson (D-PA)

DeBerry had received endorsements from:
 * Celebrities, political activists and political commentators
 * American People's Historical Society director Bernie Sanders of Vermont

Reagan had received endorsements from:
 * United States Senate
 * Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ)
 * Virginia Senator Harry Byrd Jr. (D-VA)
 * New York Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY)
 * Maryland Senator Charles Mathias (R-MD)
 * Former Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke (R-MA)
 * Former Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN)
 * United States House of Representatives
 * Representative (California's 12th congressional district) Pete McCloskey (R-CA)
 * Former Representative (California's 26th congressional district) James Roosevelt (D-CA; son of Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
 * Governors and State Constitutional officers
 * Former Georgia Governor Lester Maddox (D-GA)
 * Former Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson (D-AL)
 * Former Texas Governor Preston Smith (D-TX)
 * Former Mississippi Governor John Bell Williams (D-MS)
 * Current and former state and local officials and party officeholders
 * Florida

 * Fort Lauderdale City Advisory Board member Jim Naugle (D-FL)
 * New York

 * Former New York State Senator Jeremiah B. Bloom (D-NY)
 * Celebrities, political activists and political commentators
 * Former UCLA men's basketball head coach John Wooden
 * Retired United States Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt (D-VA)
 * Newspaper endorsements
 * The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona
 * The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, California
 * The Omaha World-Herald in Omaha, Nebraska
 * The Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa
 * The Record in Stockton, California
 * The Repository in Canton, Ohio
 * The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio
 * The Blade in Toledo, Ohio
 * Houston Chronicle in Houston, Texas
 * Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia

Results
The election was held on November 4, 1980. Ronald Reagan and running mate George H. W. Bush defeated the Carter-Mondale ticket by almost 10 percentage points in the popular vote. The electoral college vote was a landslide, with 489 votes (representing 44 states) for Reagan and 49 for Carter (representing six states and Washington, D.C.). Republicans also gained control of the Senate for the first time since 1954.

NBC News projected Reagan as the winner at 8:15 pm EST (5:15 PST), before voting was finished in the West, based on exit polls; it was the first time a broadcast network used exit polling to project a winner, and it took the other broadcast networks by surprise. Carter conceded defeat at 9:50 pm EST. Some of Carter's advisors urged him to wait until 11:00 pm EST to allow poll results from the West Coast to come in, but Carter decided to concede earlier in order to avoid the impression that he was sulking. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill angrily accused Carter of weakening the party's performance in the Senate elections by doing this.

John Anderson won 6.6% of the popular vote but no states. He had the most support in New England, fueled by liberal and moderate Republicans who felt Reagan was too far to the right, and with voters who normally leaned Democratic but were dissatisfied with the Carter administration's policies. His best showing was in Massachusetts, where he won 15% of the vote. This is the first time Massachusetts voted for a Republican nominee since Dwight Eisenhower.

Anderson performed worst in the South, receiving under 2% of the vote in South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. He said he was accused of spoiling the election by receiving votes that might have otherwise been cast for Carter, but 37% of Anderson voters polled preferred Reagan as their second choice. Libertarian Party nominee Ed Clark received 921,299 popular votes (1.06%).

Carter's loss was the worst performance by an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin Roosevelt by a margin of 18% in 1932, and his 49 Electoral College votes were the fewest won by an incumbent since William Howard Taft won eight in 1912. Carter was the first incumbent Democrat to serve only one full term since James Buchanan. This was the third and most recent presidential election in which the incumbent Democrat lost reelection, after 1840 and 1888. This was the first time since 1840 that an incumbent Democrat lost the popular vote. Reagan had the most lopsided Electoral College victory for a first-time president-elect, with the exception of George Washington's unanimous victory in 1788.

This election was the last time a Republican won the presidency without winning Georgia. It was the first time Massachusetts voted for a Republican candidate since 1956. 1980 is one of only two occurrences of pairs of consecutive elections seeing the incumbent presidents defeated, the other happening in 1892. This is the first time since 1892 that a party was voted out after a single four-year term, and the first for Democrats since 1888. This did not occur again for either party until 2020.

Reagan won 53% of the vote in reliably Democratic South Boston, one example of the so-called Reagan Democrat. Although he won an even larger Electoral College majority in 1984, the 1980 election nonetheless stands as the last time some now very strongly Democratic counties gave a Republican a majority or plurality. Notable examples are Jefferson County in Washington State, Lane County, Oregon, Marin and Santa Cruz Counties in California, McKinley County, New Mexico, and Rock Island County, Illinois. Survey research and post-election polling indicated that the landslide result had been more a repudiation of Carter than an embrace of Reagan. But the public was aware that Reagan would move the nation in a more conservative direction, and was apparently willing to give it a chance to avoid four more years of Carter.

At age 69, Reagan was the oldest non-incumbent to win a presidential election. Thirty-six years later, in 2016, this record was surpassed by Donald Trump at age 70 and, four years later, by Joe Biden at 77.

Results
Source (popular vote):

Source (electoral vote):

Results by state
Source:

 Maine allowed its electoral votes to be split between candidates. Two electoral votes were awarded to the winner of the statewide race and one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. Reagan won all four votes.

States that flipped from Democratic to Republican

 * Alabama
 * Arkansas
 * Delaware
 * Florida
 * Kentucky
 * Louisiana
 * Mississippi
 * Missouri
 * New York
 * North Carolina
 * Ohio
 * Pennsylvania
 * South Carolina
 * Tennessee
 * Texas
 * Wisconsin

Close states
Margin of victory less than 1% (30 electoral votes):
 * 1) Massachusetts, 0.15% (3,829 votes)
 * 2) Tennessee, 0.29% (4,710 votes)
 * 3) Arkansas, 0.61% (5,123 votes)

Margin of victory less than 5% (135 electoral votes):
 * 1) Alabama, 1.30% (17,462 votes)
 * 2) Mississippi, 1.32% (11,808 votes)
 * 3) Kentucky, 1.46% (18,857 votes)
 * 4) South Carolina, 1.53% (13,647 votes)
 * 5) Hawaii, 1.90% (5,767 votes)
 * 6) North Carolina, 2.12% (39,383 votes)
 * 7) Delaware, 2.33% (5,498 votes)
 * 8) New York, 2.67% (165,459 votes)
 * 9) Maryland, 2.96% (45,555 votes)
 * 10) Maine's 1st Congressional District, 3.15% (8,661 votes)
 * 11) Maine, 3.36% (17,548 votes)
 * 12) Maine's 2nd Congressional District, 3.73% (8,887 votes)
 * 13) Minnesota, 3.94% (80,933 votes)
 * 14) West Virginia, 4.51% (33,256 votes)
 * 15) Wisconsin, 4.72% (107,261 votes)

Margin of victory more than 5%, but less than 10% (113 electoral votes):
 * 1) Louisiana, 5.45% (84,400 votes)
 * 2) Vermont, 5.96% (12,707 votes)
 * 3) Michigan, 6.49% (253,693 votes)
 * 4) Missouri, 6.81% (142,999 votes)
 * 5) Pennsylvania, 7.11% (324,332 votes)
 * 6) Illinois, 7.93% (376,636 votes) (tipping-point state)
 * 7) Connecticut, 9.64% (135,478 votes)
 * 8) Oregon, 9.66% (114,154 votes)

Statistics
Counties with highest percentage of the vote (Republican)
 * 1)  Banner County, Nebraska 90.41%
 * 2)  Madison County, Idaho 88.41%
 * 3)  McIntosh County, North Dakota 86.01%
 * 4)  McPherson County, South Dakota 85.60%
 * 5)  Franklin County, Idaho 85.31%

Counties with highest percentage of the vote (Democratic)
 * 1)  Macon County, Alabama 80.10%
 * 2)  Hancock County, Georgia 78.50%
 * 3)  Duval County, Texas 77.91%
 * 4)  Jefferson County, Mississippi 77.84%
 * 5)  Greene County, Alabama 77.09%

Counties with highest percentage of the vote (Other)
 * 1)  Pitkin County, Colorado 27.76%
 * 2)  Nantucket, Massachusetts 21.63%
 * 3)  Winnebago County, Illinois 21.50%
 * 4)  Dukes County, Massachusetts 20.88%
 * 5)  Story County, Iowa 19.41%

Voter demographics
Source: CBS News and The New York Times exit poll from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research ( 15,201 surveyed )

Books

 * . online review by Michael Barone
 * Davies, Gareth, and Julian E. Zelizer, eds. America at the Ballot Box: Elections and Political History (2015) pp. 196–218.
 * Hogue, Andrew P. Stumping God: Reagan, Carter, and the Invention of a Political Faith (Baylor University Press; 2012) 343 pages; A study of religious rhetoric in the campaign
 * Johnstone, Andrew, and Andrew Priest, eds. US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy: Candidates, Campaigns, and Global Politics from FDR to Bill Clinton (2017) pp 250–270.  online
 * Mason, Jim (2011). No Holding Back: The 1980 John B. Anderson Presidential Campaign. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. ISBN 0761852263.
 * . online review by Lou Cannon
 * Stanley, Timothy. Kennedy vs. Carter: The 1980 Battle for the Democratic Party's Soul (University Press of Kansas, 2010) 298 pages. A revisionist history of the 1970s and their political aftermath that argues that Ted Kennedy's 1980 campaign was more popular than has been acknowledged; describes his defeat by Jimmy Carter in terms of a "historical accident" rather than perceived radicalism.
 * Mason, Jim (2011). No Holding Back: The 1980 John B. Anderson Presidential Campaign. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. ISBN 0761852263.
 * . online review by Lou Cannon
 * Stanley, Timothy. Kennedy vs. Carter: The 1980 Battle for the Democratic Party's Soul (University Press of Kansas, 2010) 298 pages. A revisionist history of the 1970s and their political aftermath that argues that Ted Kennedy's 1980 campaign was more popular than has been acknowledged; describes his defeat by Jimmy Carter in terms of a "historical accident" rather than perceived radicalism.
 * Stanley, Timothy. Kennedy vs. Carter: The 1980 Battle for the Democratic Party's Soul (University Press of Kansas, 2010) 298 pages. A revisionist history of the 1970s and their political aftermath that argues that Ted Kennedy's 1980 campaign was more popular than has been acknowledged; describes his defeat by Jimmy Carter in terms of a "historical accident" rather than perceived radicalism.