1984 U.S. presidential election

1984

Ronald Reagan won 49 states and a record 525 electoral votes over Walter Mondale, whose running mate Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman on a major party ticket.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First atomic nuclei form → First stars ignite → First galaxies assemble → Milky Way takes shape → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Ediacaran biota → Cloudina, first shells and first predators → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Lobe-finned fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → Synapsids, the mammal line, split from reptiles → Therapsids, ancestors of mammals → Cynodonts, the ancestors of mammals → First mammals → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → First anthropoid primates → Apes split from monkeys → Great apes split from gibbons → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Egyptian hieroglyphs → The alphabet → Phoenician alphabet → Greek alphabet → Solon's reforms → Athenian democracy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Death of Alexander and the Hellenistic kingdoms → Seleucid Empire founded → Parthian Empire founded → Sasanian Empire → Birth of Muhammad → Muhammad's first revelations → The Hijra → Conquest of Mecca → Death of Muhammad and the Rashidun caliphate → Arab conquests → Abbasid Caliphate → Battle of Talas → Paper reaches the Islamic world → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → Stamp Act → Boston Tea Party → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → Articles of Confederation ratified → Shays' Rebellion → U.S. Constitution → Louisiana Purchase → Austin's colony in Mexican Texas → Texas Revolution → United States annexes Texas → Mexican-American War → Compromise of 1850 → Kansas-Nebraska Act → Lincoln elected president → Fort Sumter → U.S. Civil War → Emancipation Proclamation → 13th Amendment abolishes slavery → 14th Amendment → 15th Amendment → 1872 U.S. presidential election → 1876 U.S. presidential election → 1880 U.S. presidential election → 1884 U.S. presidential election → 1888 U.S. presidential election → 1892 U.S. presidential election → 1896 U.S. presidential election → 1900 U.S. presidential election → 1904 U.S. presidential election → 1908 U.S. presidential election → 1912 U.S. presidential election → 1916 U.S. presidential election → 1920 U.S. presidential election → 1924 U.S. presidential election → 1928 U.S. presidential election → 1932 U.S. presidential election → 1936 U.S. presidential election → 1940 U.S. presidential election → 1944 U.S. presidential election → 1948 U.S. presidential election → 1952 U.S. presidential election → 1956 U.S. presidential election → 1960 U.S. presidential election → 1964 U.S. presidential election → 1968 U.S. presidential election → 1972 U.S. presidential election → 1976 U.S. presidential election → 1980 U.S. presidential election → 1984 U.S. presidential election

The story

On November 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan won re-election over Democrat Walter Mondale, Carter's vice president. Reagan took 525 electoral votes, the most ever won by a candidate, and 58.8 percent of the popular vote. Mondale won only his home state of Minnesota and Washington, D.C., for 13 electoral votes and 40.6 percent. Mondale's running mate, Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York, was the first woman nominated for vice president by a major party.

After a deep recession in 1981 and 1982, the economy was growing fast and inflation had fallen sharply. Reagan's campaign captured the mood with its 'Morning in America' advertisements. Mondale told the Democratic convention that taxes would have to rise to cut the deficit and that Reagan would raise them too but would not say so, a candor that hurt him. Reagan stumbled in the first debate, but in the second he defused the question of his age by joking that he would not exploit his opponent's 'youth and inexperience.'

Why it mattered

Reagan's second term brought the 1986 tax reform and summits with Gorbachev that eased the Cold War.
The Iran-Contra affair broke during his second term.
Democrats' repeated losses fed the centrist 'New Democrat' movement that produced Bill Clinton.

Sources

1984 Electoral College Results National Archives
The 7 Biggest Landslides in US Presidential History History.com
Geraldine Ferraro's 1984 VP Nomination Was Historic, But Failed to Clinch a Win History.com
October 7, 1984: Debate with Walter Mondale (Domestic Issues) Miller Center

Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made

Community notes

Loading notes…

Learn more ranked by votes

Documentarchives.gov

1984 Electoral College Results

Editor's pick

BookLou Cannon

President Reagan

Editor's pick

BookGeraldine A. Ferraro

Ferraro

Editor's pick

VideoSearch on YouTube

1984 election Reagan Mondale Ferraro documentary

Editor's pick

At a glance

When: November 6, 1984
Where: United States (50 states and Washington, D.C.)
Key people: Ronald Reagan (Republican, winner)
Walter Mondale (Democratic nominee)
Geraldine Ferraro (Democratic vice-presidential nominee)
George H. W. Bush (vice president)

525 to 13electoral votes, Reagan over Mondale

58.8%Reagan's share of the popular vote

625earlier events it rests on

5later events that depend on it

Couldn't have happened without

1980 U.S. presidential election1980

EssentialReagan ran for re-election as the incumbent his 1980 landslide had made.

Thatcher, Reagan and the market turn1979

ImportantTax cuts and the market turn of his first term were the record voters endorsed.

Led to

1988 U.S. presidential election1988

More from Information Age

End of the gold standard1971 Microprocessor1971 First handheld mobile phone call1973 Recombinant DNA1973 TCP/IP1974 Public-key cryptography1976