so let's in honor of ken burns and all he's done to inspire americans to learn about history, take those ideals of the declaration, the constitution, keep this conversation and inspire this light across. america, please join me in giving gratitude to ken burns. thank you. it's good to be able to keep the government. we're going to do the confession.

i consider the trust that you have placed in me sacred. and i give you my sacred oath that i will do my utmost to justify your faith. and that was ronald reagan

reacting to his landslide victory over democratic president jimmy carter in the 1980 election. a result that changed the country in many ways for years to come. thanks for joining us for our american history tv series, historic presidential elections. during this election season, we're looking at elections from past years. and this week, it's the election of 1980. our guest is andrew busch civics professor at the university of tennessee, associate director of the instant tute of american civics at the university, and the author of this book, reagan's victory the present annual election of 1980 and the rise of the right. here's the tally from 1980. ronald reagan received 50.7% of the vote and 489 electoral votes. jimmy carter, the incumbent, 41% of the vote, 49 electoral votes.

and john anderson and independ that who we'll talk about shortly. 6.6% of the vote, zero electoral votes. andrew busch how did ronald reagan achieve this historic landslide election? well, there were a few things that he had to do and he did them. the first one was that he had to frame the election as a referendum on jimmy carter. that is to say jimmy carter had not had terribly successful for years. there were some things that he had had he had done well, but the country was not satisfied. the economy was not doing well. there were foreign policy crises. so reagan had to frame the issue as do you want four more years of that? he succeeded in doing that. the second thing he had to do was to unify his own party in a way that barry goldwater did not

in 1964. and he was able to do that. and finally, he had to convince american eyes that he was not scary. president carter tried to focus attention on the notion that reagan should be considered scary and scary. you know, reagan had to he had to defeat that. and he was able to do that. so those were, i think, the three main things he had to do. well, here's a snapshot of america in 1980, the population 226 million. it's about 330 million today. the inflation rate was at about 14%. the unemployment rate, 7.5%. 30 year fixed mortgage for a house. 13.7%. and climbing. and there was a recession going on in 1980. did the economy play a large role in jimmy carter's defeat? absolutely.

the economy played probably the single most important role. there were other things that were. there were also quite important. but this was what we called stagflation. that was a combination of stagnation, recession and also inflation, which was a problem for carter for two reasons. the first one was obvious, which is that nobody likes inflation and nobody likes unemployment, and nobody above all wants to have both of them the same time. but it also was a problem for him because it called into question the dominant economic theory of the time keynesianism, which really held that that couldn't happen. you couldn't have rising inflation and rising unemployment. at the same time. and so it really opened the door for a significant rethinking of economics and economic policy. and here's a quick look at jimmy carter's biography. he was born on october 1st, 1924, in plains, georgia. went to the u.s. naval academy,

enlisted in 1946. he was a peanut farmer, a georgia state senator. he was georgia governor. from 1971 to 1975. at that time, georgia governors could not succeed themselves. he was elected the 39th president of the united states in 1976. he won the nobel prize in 2002, working on international conflict and human rights, and has had a historically long post-presidential career. but in 1980, how did the country feel about jimmy carter as their president? well, there was a lot of dissatisfaction in 1980 about jimmy carter, as president. he he had really suffered in 1979. he was doing worse in 1979 than than in 1980. in some ways, his approval rating was down into the

twenties in the summer of 1979, and it looked like he might have a really tough renomination race against ted kennedy. and then the iranian hostage crisis started and the soviets invaded afghanistan. less than two months later. and these foreign policy crises really had the effect of boosting carter back up. that was what we sometimes call a rally round the flag effect. and so he was he was back into decent territory. but then that began to decay again as the hostage crisis continued. as the economy continued to not improve in terms of inflation and unemployment began to rise, we really went into a recession. it became more and more apparent. and so by the time people were voting. carter's approval rating was

well below 50%. quick look at ronald reagan. born 1911 in tampico, illinois. he was a sports broadcaster, of course, a movie actor. more than 50 films served in the u.s.. army 1942 to 1945. president of the screen actors guild, 1947 to 1952. and then again from. 1959 to 1960. long time democrat for many years, but elected as a republican as california governor from. 1967 to 1975. and of course, elected the 40th president in 1980. what was ronald reagan known for as governor of california? well, there were a few things that he was known for as governor of california. one of them was the that he tried to work to kind of balance california budget. he did cut taxes, but also

raised taxes. on occasion, which was true during his presidency as well. he signed what was then one of the more liberal abortion laws in the country. although he he later argued that he didn't understand exactly how it would be used. and even today it would be not considered very liberal abortion law or in the context of 1970 or so, what it had done. and he was really known, particularly for being tough with student protesters at the university of california, who had taken over some portion of the campus and and reagan came down hard on them. and forced them out of there. there encampment, you could say. and this was about yeah. this was not his first run for president in 1980 either was it?

no, no. he had made a very short lived and not particularly vigorous run in 1968. he sort of tested the waters a bit and had some support in the republican national convention. but did not did not prevail. there. and then in 1976, he made a much more serious run and challenged then president gerald ford and gave him a real run for his money. it was the the last convention where the major party candidates came into it without there being enough delegates committed to anyone to know for sure who the nominee was going to be. ford wound up winning that by a small number of delegates. but reagan came very close and gave a speech at the end of the

convention at ford's invitation that really in impressed a lot of the delegates and gave them a good launching pad for the next time around. well, it was in late 1979 that both ronald reagan and jimmy carter announced their election bids. here they are. you know, someone once said that the difference between an american and any other kind of person is that an american lives in anticipation of the future because he knows it will be a great place. other people fear the future has just a repetition of past failures. well, there's a lot of truth in that. if there's one thing we're sure of, it is that history need not be relived, that nothing is impossible, and that man is capable of improving his circumstances beyond what we're told is fact. now, there are those in our land today. however, who would have us believe that the united states, like other great civilizations of the past, has reached the zenith of its power that we're weak and fearful, reduced to

bickering with each other and no longer possessed, or the will to cope with our problems. much of this talk has come from leaders who claim that our problems are too difficult to handle. we are supposed to meekly accept their failures as the most which can humanly be done. they tell us we must learn to live with less and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been. at the america of the coming years. we'll be a place where, because of our past excesses, it will be impossible to dream and make those dreams come true. i don't believe that. and i don't believe you do either. that's why i'm seeking the presidency. i cannot and will not stand by and see this great country destroy itself. our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control and false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an

attempt to convince us our high standard of living. the result of thrift and hard work is somehow selfish extravagance, which we must renounce as we join in sharing scarce city. i don't agree that our nation must resign itself to inevitable decline, yielding its proud position to whether hands. i am totally unwilling to see this country fail in its obligation to itself and to the other free peoples of the world. as president, i have had to make some very difficult decisions and i expect to make some more. i've made some mistakes and i have learned from them. now, for some bitter fights against selfish special interests, and i expect to go on leading the fight for the common good of the american people. i carry some scars and i carry them with pride. i also carry the knowledge

strengthened by my own experience in this office that the greatness of our nation and the goodness of the american people will prevail. we've set a firm and constructive course for the history of our people. it's a difficult court, but it's the right one, and we must not turn aside the course of a great nation is not changed overnight. the problems we face are very difficult. there are no easy solutions and i promise none. but there are solutions. in the past three years, the united states has begun to move in a new and better direction. we are a strong nation. we are a nation at peace. we are enhancing our nation's security. we are improving social and

economic justice. and we are leading the struggle for human rights throughout the world. our superb system of government and our great natural and human resources give us a strength and the flexibility to meet rapidly changing times. the world of the 1980s was libya's. different from the world of 1960, as 1960 was from the world of the 1930s. as we enter the next decade, the work that we've begun together will let us meet even the most serious challenges. what we do now will bring us safely and at an even better time of peace and security. if we have the determination to see it through, and if we have the courage to continue making the hard decisions and thanks for joining us on american history tv for our historic

presidential election series. this week, we're looking at 1980 and the race between incumbent jimmy carter and governor ronald reagan of california. how would you describe ronald reagan's campaign style. well, i would say that his campaign style was to to speak to people in a way that they understood and that they found persuasive his his you know, his oratory was generally pretty effective. yeah. he he would campaign where he needed to campaign. he used humor a lot. he, you know, so he was sort of disarming in that way. and. for the most part, stayed away

from the personal attacks. he would criticize carter or he would point out differences that he might have with other republican candidates in the primaries. but he tried to stay away from personal attacks. andrew busch of the university of tennessee was the primary tough for ronald reagan in 1980? i would say it was moderately tough. yeah, it was. i wouldn't call it easy. it was not as tough as, you know, some people have. but it was a challenge. basically, he was running george h.w. bush was running and became his main opponent, his main challenger. you also had senator howard baker. you had former texas governor and treasury secretary john connally. and you had john anderson, who

was a kind of a liberal republic. and congressman from illinois. and a couple other people as well. but those were the main the main ones. and bush actually beat reagan in the iowa caucuses and was briefly ahead in new hampshire until reagan turned the tide in new hampshire and wound up winning pretty decisive early there. he knocked off reagan. that is knocked off connally in south carolina. not only had to put all those eggs in that basket and reagan won decisively there certainly was out. illinois was an important primary and it was really a three way race between reagan, bush and anderson and reagan won that race in illinois. it was a tough battle, but he did win.

and anderson, basically he dropped out of the republican nomination race at that point and decided to run as an independent candidate for president. bush won a couple of other primaries along the way. michigan and pennsylvania. it kind of delayed the the inevitable. but reagan won pretty much everywhere else. and came in to the convention with no doubt in 1980 that he was going to be the nominee. and it was in 1980 that the iconic phrase voodoo economics came to be placed on ronald reagan by george h.w. bush, but he ended up picking george bush for his vice presidential nominee. he did. he did end up picking bush. bush was the strongest other candidate in the field. he had stayed in the longest and won the most votes. next to reagan and he was

reassuring to a lot of republican establishment folks. bush was. bush had a lot of foreign policy experience. reagan had a lot of foreign policy ideas that were very important. but he did not have experience as governor of california. so it helped to supply that as well. there was a brief moment when it looked like gerald ford might wind up on the ticket, but when reagan found out that ford was hoping to be a sort of co-president rather than just vice president, that ended that. and bush went to the convention hall to stop the rumors and announced his selection of bush. now on the democratic side, jimmy carter faced opposition, correct? he did. so the main opponent, it was ted kennedy, the younger brother, youngest brother of former president john f kennedy. ted kennedy was the liberal senator from massachusetts and

he never really liked carter. he thought that carter was too much of a technocrat and too conservative and not not bold enough. and so. so kennedy got in the race. california governor jerry brown also ran as a kind of third candidate in there. but was mostly between kennedy and carter. carter won the early primaries and it looked like he was just going to run away with the thing by. kennedy came from behind and won in connecticut and new york, sort of guts. got a second renewed. his campaign and then it looked like you know again carter was going to just run away with it after that and then kennedy would win one, that sort of bringing himself back at the last minute and then on the last

day of primaries, kennedy won. california and new jersey and several other primaries. and came into the convention with some momentum. but he had to get a change in the rules. to allow carter delegates to be unbound and that that effort failed. so but he didn't take it all the way to the convention. for me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end for all those whose cares have been our concern. the work goes on. the cause endures, the hope still lives. and the dream shall never die. yeah. and ted kennedy won almost 40% of the vote in the democratic for the democratic nominee in

1980. did that damaged jimmy carter in the general election? i think it damaged carter. i think, you know, you always want to be coming in to the general election with a unified party and not only had kennedy won all of those votes against an incumbent president of his own party, which is unusual by kennedy, was very lukewarm, um, to carter, even at the convention and so sometimes when there's a tough primary, things get healed at the convention and the losing candidate makes a show of embracing the the winner. and that did not really happen. so it hurt in her. carter and reagan's campaign actually used some clips from kennedy in advertising in the fall. so some of kennedy's speeches against carter in the spring wound up being used in reagan

ads in the fall. so in 1980, andrew busch what did the democrats stand for? what did the republicans stand for, and did they reflect their party platforms? yeah, so, you know, the reagan what reagan stood for was pretty clear. he had come out of the. you say that the goldwater tradition and that was what launched his national political life with a speech for goldwater, 1964. so it was a conservative platform cut spending, domestic spending, at least cut taxes. platform embraced the kemp tax cut. the platform embraced a promise of gaining military superiority of the soviet union, and it became much more socially conservative than republican

platforms had been in the past. so it became unambiguous, mostly pro-life on abortion and back away from the party's longtime commitment to the equal rights amendment. the democrats were in a bit more flux. they they were more liberal than the republicans, for sure. but carter had moved the party somewhat to the right on some issues, on economic issues. for example, in the spring of 1980, he actually supported some cuts in social programs after the soviet invasion of afghanistan, and he did a major turn around on foreign policy and became much more in favor of stronger defense. standing up to the soviets and, you know, at no point was he, as you could say, full, full throated about that as as far as reagan and the republican is.

but he had sort of it moved in their direction somewhat so. and that was part of kennedy's objection to carter. so i think the democrats had a liberal platform. kennedy, kennedy's alternative of platform planks often won. so he succeeded in making the platform more liberal than it started as. and that put carter in a bit of an awkward position, too. but so that's that's where they were. i think the republicans have become consistent, more consistently conservative, and the democrats were grasping a little bit for trying to find their footing. in the summer of 1980, the republicans met in detroit. the democrats in new york city. here's a portion of ronald reagan and jimmy carter's acceptance speeches. more than more than anything else. i want my candidacy to unify our

country, to renew the american spirit and sense of purpose. i want to carry our message to every american, regardless of party affiliation, who is a member of this community of shared values. never before in our history have americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence. any one of which could destroy us. we face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense, and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity. the major issue of this camp is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of democratic party leadership in the white house and in the congress for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us each.

they tell us they've done the most that could humanly be done. they say that the united states has had its day in the sun, that our nation has passed its zenith. they expect you to tell your children that the american people no longer have the will to cope with their problems, that the future will be one of sacred faiths and few opportunities. my fellow citizens, i utterly reject that view. the american people, the american people, the most generous on earth who created the higher standard of living are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backward ourselves and those who believe we can have no business leading this nation.

i will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts one run crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose. we have come together here because the american people deserve better from those to whom they entrust our nation's highest offices. and we stand united. we stand united in our resolve to do something about it. we need a rebirth of the american tradition of leadership at every level of government and in private life as well. the choice could not be more clear, nor the consequences more crucial. than one of the futures. we can choose the future that you and i have been building

together as the security and justice and peace, as a future of economic security. security that will come from tapping our own great resources of oil and gas, coal and sunlight, and from building a tools and technology and factories for revitalized economy based on jobs and stable prices for everyone. and i see a future of justice. the justice of good job, decent health care, quality education, a full opportunity for all people, regardless of color or language or religion. the simple human justice of equal right for all men and for all women guarantee equal right and love under the constitution of the united states of america.

and i see a future of peace. a peace born of wisdom and based on the fairness toward all countries of the world, a peace guaranteed both by american military strength and by american moral strength as well. that is a future i want for all people, a future of confidence and hope and a good life. it's a future america must choose. and with your help and with your

commitment, it is the future. america will do. but there's another part of our future and that other future. i see despair. despair of millions who would struggle for equal opportunity and a better life and struggle alone. and i see surrender to the surrender of our energy. a future for the merchants of oil. the surrender of our economic future. to a bizarre program of massive tax cuts for the rich. service cuts for the poor and massive inflation for everyone. and i see risk the risk of going to national control station, the risk of an uncontrollable, unaffordable and unwinnable

nuclear armed race. and you're watching american history tv's special series historic presidential elections. we're talking about the election of 1980 with andrew busch of the university of tennessee. he's the author of this book, reagan's victory the presidential election of 1980 and the rise of the right. we're in the general election now. it's the fall of 1980. andrew busch what were the strategy is on both sides? well, the strategy thematically for reagan was to emphasize carter's record and make it a referendum on carter and enthuse the republicans, but also not so much that it scared voters in the middle. so that was that was there you could say thematics strategy.

carter's was to scare the voters in the middle by the prospect of reagan as much as possible and to emphasize his experience and the notion that presidency is not a place where you want to have someone doing on the job training. so those were the major themes. you know, in terms of the geographic strategy, reagan really to a degree that may surprise people today was focused largely on the large industrial states. so ohio, pennsylvania, illinois, which was a swing state back then. even new york state was in play. and then the west, which was a kind of natural, strong place for him, and probably the outer south. he was kind of expect thing that

carter would win the deep south and they didn't really contest very much in the deep south until late in the campaign when the polling showed that they could. carter had to hold on to the south and he had the contest. those those big industrial states. so that was, in a lot of ways, the main battleground. professor bush, we talked to you a few weeks ago, the election of 1948, and you said that harry truman ran a negative campaign then would you call the election of 1980 and negative campaign? it was substantially a negative. yeah. i mean, both candidates. carter talked about his experience or his campaign did. they. talked about some of his diplomatic triumphs in the middle east and reagan talked about what he wanted to do in the country, what he had done in

california in terms of budget, things of that sort. but a lot of the campaign was reagan criticizing carter's four years and carter claiming that reagan was kind of unfit for the presidency because he was too radical andrew busch of the university of tennessee. we haven't talked about our third party candidate, john anderson. did he have an impact in the general election? well, he had an impact, but it was not as great an impact as he had hoped. i think his primary reason for getting into the race was that he didn't like reagan. he thought that reagan was too conservative and he thought that republicans, his his party had made a mistake in nominating reagan so that was really the motivating factor behind him getting into the race, though he also wasn't satisfied with carter and. reagan, of course, in the end won.

so anderson did not succeed in preventing that. what he probably did was in at a handful of states tell some states to try to reagan inadvertently massachusetts for example possibly in new york possibly one or two others where anderson had a lot of support and reagan won narrowly and the reason that this happened was that through the course of the campaign, it became more apparent that anderson was really in some ways, the most liberal person in the race on budget matters. he offered no tax cut. the republicans were offering a big tax cut. democrats a smaller tax cut, anderson. no tax cut. he was very critical of. tough stance for soviet.

and so he became a lot of liberals first choice instead of carter. and that's why you know, he does well in massachusetts. and reagan winds up sneaking in and winning massachusetts because because anderson takes more votes away from from carter. but reagan won by so much nationally that that was he could have lost all of the states that that anderson tilted to reagan. reagan could have lost those states. and still won the election. so anderson was a player, but in the end, he didn't. he didn't have got much as far as i mentioned. we talked to you a few weeks ago about the truman dewey election of 1948. we reported that about $5 million was spent on that race. you mentioned campaign finance reform in the 1970s. well, it's now 1980.

and here are some of the numbers that we found for the 1980 race. both candidates started out even $29 million in federal funds and close to 5 million more in national party aid. now, state and local gop parties and conservative groups gave up to 25 million more to the reagan campaign. organized labor behind jimmy carter, perhaps 15 million more money was tracked a little closer in 1980, wasn't it? the 1948? yeah, it was tracked. it was tracked much closer. and there were individual contribution limits of $1,000 per election, per contributor, which was not the case in 1948. so there was a tilt toward more smaller donors. some of the some of the political action committees that came in on the conservative side, like the national conservative political action committee or nick pac and

others, the free congress. foundation by paul weyrich, those are committee, i guess it was free congress committee, all of those raised huge amount of money in small donations through direct mail. and that's not something that you really saw in 1948 at all. what about the media? did they have a large role in 1980? well, they they did in the sense that. i think the debates were important. there were two debates. one was just reagan versus anderson, because carter refused to be involved in a debate that included anderson. and then the other one was just carter and reagan, because anderson had fallen in the polls enough. but both of those were, you know, widely by the media. there were at least, i think,

100 million viewers of the reagan carter debate in late october. and those those had an impact in terms of coverage. it's not so clear how much of an impact they had. i think there were enough ways for the candidates to bypass the coverage by journalists that they were able to do that. just give one example of that. in this era, in the primary races, no republican candidate had worse coverage than than reagan. reagan was actually the recipient of a higher ratio of negative and positive coverage than any other candidate. and he got to nominate. and john anderson had the best coverage of republican candidate and he up having to drop out and run as a third party candidate. and here's a portion of the 1980 debate between ronald reagan and jimmy carter.

i've been president now for. almost four years. i've had to make thousands of decisions and each one of those decisions has been a learning process. i've seen the strength of my nation and i've seen the crises that it approached in a tentative way. and i've had to deal with those crises as best i could as i've studied the record between myself and governor reagan. i've been impressed with the stark differences that exist between us. i think the result of this debate indicate that that fact is true. i consider myself in the mainstream of my party. i consider myself in the mainstream, even of the bipartisan list of presidents who served before me. the united states must be a nation strong. the united states must be a nation secure. we must have a society that's just and fair. and we must extend. the benefits of our own

commitment to peace, to create a peaceful world. i believe that since been in office, there have been six or eight areas of combat evolve in other parts of the world. in each case, i alone have had to determine the interest of my country and the degree of involvement of my country. i've done that with moderation, with care, with thoughtfulness. sometimes consulting experts. but i've learned in this last three and a half years that when an issue is extremely difficult, when the call is very close, the chances are the experts will be divided. almost 50, 50. and the final judgment about the future of a nation war, peace, involvement, reticence, thoughtfulness, care, consideration, concern has to be made by the man in the oval office. it's a lonely job, but with the involvement of the american people in the process, with an open government, the job is a

very gratifying one. the american people now are facing next tuesday a lonely decision. those listening to my voice will have to make a judgment about the future of this country. and i think they ought to remember that one vote can make a lot of difference if one vote per precinct had changed. in 1960, john kennedy would never have been president of his nation. and if a few more people had gone to the polls and voted in 1968, hubert humphrey would have been president richard nixon would not. there is a partnership involved in our nation to stay strong, to stay at peace, to raise how the banner of human rights, to set an example for the rest of the world, to let our deep beliefs and commitments be felt by others and all the nations. is my plan for the future. i ask the american people to join me in this partnership. next tuesday, all of you will go to the. you stand there in the polling place and make a decision. i think when you make that decision, it might be. well, if you would ask yourself.

are you better off 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 and 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 who 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. this country doesn't have to be in the shape that it is in. we do not have to go down, go on sharing and scarce it with the

country getting worse off with unemployment growing. we talk about the unemployment lines. if all of the unemployed today were in a single line allowing two feet for each one of them, that line would reach from new york city to los angeles, california. all this can be cured and all of it can be solved. i have not had the experience that the president has had in holding that office, but i think in being governor of california, the most state in the union, if it were a nation, it would be the seventh ranking economic power in the world. i, too, had some lonely moments and decisions to make. i know that the economic program that i have proposed for this nation in the next few years can resolve many of the problems that troubled us today. and we're looking at the election of 1980 with our guest andrew busch at the university of tennessee. he's a civic professor there and the author of this book, reagan's victory the

presidential election of 1980 and the rise of the right who won those debates? well, the first one was a little ambiguous. that was that was reagan versus anderson in terms of the polling after words. it was it was mixed. however, i think that strategic state reagan won because he was able to be on screen being seen by millions of americans. and you know, appearing to be a perfectly sensible, reasonable person, unlike the caricature that the carter was advancing in this campaign. so the fact that reagan was able to get out there and give that impression that he was he was not to say he was was very helpful to him. i think can actually after the debate, he be kicked up by a few points in the in the polls and carter just looked bad from not

having been willing to to debate. so the first one i would score as a gain for reagan. the second one was a huge gain for reagan and came only one week before the general election. it was high, basically going on on the high wire without a nap and not a lot of time to recover. and it was one on one reagan versus carter. and this is this was where reagan really hit, i think, a home run with his attempt to make a retrospective election and his concluding remarks. he asked basically, are you better off than you were four years ago? is the economy better off? is our country stronger, more respected, respected around the world than it was four years ago? if you don't think so, basically about vote for me. so the polls showed most of the polls at least showed significant gain for reagan in

the aftermath that debate. most polls showed him ahead by a little bit at that point. but that debate may well have put the election away and the 1980 election results, once again, ronald reagan, over half the vote, 50.7%, nearly 44 million votes, 489 electoral votes. he won 44 states. jimmy carter, 41% of the vote, 35.5 million votes. he won 49 electoral votes and six of the states and washing ten d.c. and john anderson, the independent, 6.6% of the vote, 5.7 million votes, zero electoral votes, zero states voter turnout, 54.2%. it that again, seems like a low figure, especially when we compare it to today. yeah, that that figure was it was not terribly low for that

era. if you looked at the elections in, let's say, 1976, 1980, 84, 88, 92, they all to be kind of in that mid-fifties range for the most part, but certainly since then, especially in the last maybe three or four elections, starting in 2008, let's say they have gone up the voter turnout rates and that could be a good thing. i mean, it is a good thing that people are voting, but there are possible reasons for that. one of them is that people were more excited about some of the candidates. the other possibility is that the polarization in society has kind of driven a higher turnout rate as people are more afraid of their opponents. or it could be some combination of the two. but yeah, the voting turnout in that era tended to be kind of

around that. that rate. and when we look at the electoral map, this sea of red that we see for ronald reagan jimmy carter, 68, and the district columbia in there, any surprises on that map? well, i think the surprise is the first surprise was just that there was so much red. people had seen this as a close race in most of the polls, that it seemed like a close race until the end. and even even the reagan campaign was kind of surprised that the added that some of those states, especially in the deep south, became plausible targets for them. so i think the fact that that most of the deep south went for reagan was a surprise given how the campaign was was run and where they put their resources. i think the fact that reagan really swept those big industrial states was was a

surprise. he won massachusetts to be massachusetts was the the one state that george mcgovern had won in 1972. and reagan managed to win it, although, as i mentioned, with the help of john anderson. so there were there were definitely surprises. but i think the biggest surprise, just the overall magnitude and the fact that he had coattails in congress. well, here's a portion of the victory and concession speeches by ronald reagan and jimmy carter. you know, abe lincoln, the day after his election to the presidency, gathered in his office, the newsmen who had been covering his campaign. and he said to them, well, boys, your troubles are over now. mine have just begun. i think i know what he meant. lincoln may have been concerned. and the troubled times in which he became president. but i don't think he was afraid. he was ready to confront the

problems of the troubles of a still youthful country. determined to seize the historic opportunity to change things and i am not frightened by what lies ahead. and i don't believe the american people are frightened by what lies. together. together, we're going to do what has to be done. we're going to put america back to work again. you know. there i aim to try and tap that great american spirit that opened up this completely

undeveloped continent from coast to coast and made it a great nation, survived several wars, survive the great depression and we'll survive the problems that we face right now. i have been blessed as only a few people ever have to help shape the destiny of this nation. in that effort. i've had your faith and support in some ways. i've been the most fortunate of all presidents because i've had the daily aid of a wise man and a good man at my side. in my judgment, the best vice president anybody ever had. i've not achieved all i set out

to do. perhaps no one ever does. but we have faced the tough issues we've stood for, and we fought for. and we have achieved some very important goals for our country. these efforts will not end, but this administration, the effort must go on. nor will the progress that we have may be lost when we leave office. the great principles that have guided this nation since its very founding will continue to guide america through the challenges of the future. this has been a long and hard fought campaign. as you well know, but we must now come together as a united and a unified people to solve the problems that are still before us, to meet the challenges of a new decade. and i urge all of you to join in with me in a sincere and fruitful effort to support my

successor when he undertakes this great responsibility as president of the greatest nation on earth. and we're looking at the election of 1980 on our series historic presidential elections. our guest, andrew busch of the of tennessee. prior to looking at those speeches that we just saw, you mentioned that ronald reagan had coattails in congress. what happened in congress? well, what happened in congress was that the republicans actually gained 33 seats in the house, which was not enough to give them a partizan majority, but it was enough to give them a working majority because back in those days, there was still a significant conservative wing of the democratic party, largely, but not exclusively in the south. and so if you added the

bolstered ranks of the republicans with the conservative democrats, they actually had a working majority at the beginning of reagan's presidency. and then on top of that, one of the big surprises of the of the day of the election day was, that republicans actually gained control of the senate. they actually gained 12 seats, which was enough to put them into a majority in the senate, the first time since the election of 1952. so that was a big change. it meant that in a sense, reagan had a at least a working majority in both houses of congress, which made his first two years a lot different than they would have been otherwise. how would ronald reagan and jimmy carter fit into their

respective parties today, or would they? well, i think. with president carter, it's a it's a little hard to say because carter himself has kind of shifted in certain ways. but if you were to if you were to ask about the carter of 1980, i would say he would not fit particularly comfortably in the current democratic party, which has i think that bill clinton, at least in terms of his policy preferences, was a lot closer to what jimmy carter would feel comfortable with. i think today the democratic party has shifted much farther to the left, and i'm not sure that carter would feel the carter of 1980 would feel comfortable with it. the carter of 212 and 24 seems to to be comfortable with it. so he's he's made some shifts himself. reagan, i think, would be

comfortable with some aspects of the current republican party and not with others. he was an outsider. he was representing, you could say, the party of the country versus the party of the court going back to english tradition. he was unabashedly patriotic. he favored tax cuts, trade, all of those things. and judges who hew to a strict interpretation of the constitution. those things have not changed. but i think a lot of other things have. he was much more of a free trader. he was, you could say, more favorably disposed toward immigration, though he also tried to cut back illegal immigration and he was much more of a kind of an alliance builder and kind of a it was part of the consensus on containment that

began in the 1940s, and that in certain respects, democrats have had partly moved out of under george mcgovern. it was part of the democratic party, but he was still with it. and today, i think the republicans much more sympathetic to certain protectionist arguments there are less interested in engagement with allies or things of that sort are. and so and i think there's there's a certain difference in temperament as well. and it's a little hard to say now how much of that difference in temperament is a difference in party or how much of it is a difference just between reagan and donald trump? but reagan tended to be more sort of upbeat. sometimes people exaggerate this, but he was he was more optimistic. and and i would say at least a