The 1980 United States presidential election in Virginia took place on November 4, 1980. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1980 United States presidential election. Virginia voters chose twelve electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president of the United States.

Virginia had voted Republican at all but one of the previous seven presidential elections, largely due to its large white Washington and Richmond suburbs that received large-scale in-migration from the Northeast, alongside the Shenandoah Valley, being amongst the first traditionally Democratic areas of the former Confederacy to turn Republican at both the presidential level and in federal congressional elections. After the collapse of the Byrd Organization and the expansion of the state’s formerly small electorate via the Voting Rights Act, these trends intensified except in the heavily unionised coalfields of Southwest Virginia, where unlike elsewhere in the Confederacy, many newly registered poor whites voted Democratic. In addition to voting Republican in six of seven presidential elections, the state’s Congressional delegation would gain a Republican majority as early as the 91st Congress. Nevertheless, it was 1970 before significant GOP gains occurred in the state legislature, and it was generally acknowledged that President Nixon offered no support to down-ballot Republican candidates as he was carrying the state by a landslide margin against George McGovern, who lost every county or city in the state except Charles City.

Campaign
Republican nominee, former California Governor Ronald Reagan and Democratic candidate and incumbent United States President Jimmy Carter of Georgia both campaigned in Virginia during early October. Independent state Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr., who like his father had never previously endorsed a presidential candidate, would endorse Reagan in the middle of October, saying that Carter had a dismal record in controlling federal spending and the Soviet military build-up.

59% of white voters supported Reagan while 33% supported Carter.

Predictions

Results

Results by county or independent city

Results by congressional district
Reagan won 9 of 10 congressional districts. The only district Carter won was held by a Republican, whilst Reagan won three districts held by Democrats, two of whom lost re-election.

Analysis
Virginia was ultimately won by Reagan with a substantially larger majority than predicted by the Roanoke Times a week before the poll. Reagan received 53.03 percent of the vote to Carter’s 40.31 percent and Independent Representative John B. Anderson of Illinois’s 5.11 percent, which was still Anderson’s second-best performance in a former Confederate state. The national election was ultimately won by Reagan with 50.75 percent of the vote. In this election, Virginia voted 2.98 points to the right of the nation at-large.

, this is the last occasion when Franklin County, Isle of Wight County, Craig County, Louisa County and Pulaski County have voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. It is also the last time Arlington County and Alexandria City have voted for a Republican presidential candidate, the last occasion Virginia voted to the right of South Carolina, and the last election when Virginia voted to the left of Colorado or New Mexico.

References

Works cited
 

Virginia
1980
1980 Virginia elections