1980 U.S. presidential election

On November 4, 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan, the former actor and governor of California, defeated President Jimmy Carter. Reagan won 489 electoral votes and 50.7 percent of the popular vote. Carter took only 49 electoral votes from six states and Washington, D.C., and 41.0 percent. Independent John B. Anderson, a moderate Republican congressman, won 6.6 percent. Republicans also captured the Senate for the first time since the 1950s.¹²³⁴

Carter's term had gone badly. A second oil shock after the Iranian Revolution sent gas prices soaring, inflation reached double digits and the Federal Reserve's steep rate increases brought a recession in 1980. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage; a rescue mission in April 1980 failed in the desert. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan added to a sense of American weakness. Carter also had to fight off a long primary challenge from Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.²³

Reagan promised lower taxes, a stronger military and smaller government. In the single debate a week before the election, he asked voters, 'Are you better off than you were four years ago?' Polls had shown a close race, but undecided voters broke heavily for Reagan. The hostages were released minutes after he took the oath of office on January 20, 1981, after 444 days in captivity.³