page_title: 1984 United States presidential election
section_title: Results
hierarchical_section_title: 1984 United States presidential election / Results
caption_attribution_description: English: 1984 US Presidential election, states shaded by margin of victory Blue=Mondale Red=Reagan Brighter color means lower margin of victory. Tiers are 0%-5%, 5%-10%, 10%-15%, 15%-20%, 20%+
context_page_description: The 1984 United States presidential election was the 50th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1984. Incumbent Republican President Ronald Reagan defeated former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic candidate.
  Reagan faced only token opposition in his bid for re-nomination by the Republicans, so he and Vice President George H. W. Bush were easily re-nominated. Mondale defeated activist Jesse Jackson and several other candidates in the 1984 Democratic primaries before eventually choosing U.S. Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate, the first woman to be on a major party's presidential ticket.
  Reagan touted a strong economic recovery from the 1970s stagflation and the 1981–82 recession, as well as the widespread perception that his presidency had overseen a revival of national confidence and prestige. At 73, Reagan was, at the time, the oldest person to ever be nominated by a major party for President. The Reagan campaign produced effective television advertising and deftly neutralized concerns regarding Reagan's age.
context_section_description: Reagan was re-elected in the November 6 election in an electoral and popular vote landslide, winning 49 states. He won a record 525 electoral votes total (of 538 possible), and received 58.8% of the popular vote; despite Ferraro's selection, 55% of women who voted did so for Reagan, and his 54 to 61% of the Catholic vote was the highest for a Republican candidate in history. Mondale's 13 electoral college votes (from his home state of Minnesota—which he won by 0.18%—and the District of Columbia) marked the lowest total of any major presidential candidate since Alf Landon's 1936 loss to Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Mondale's defeat was also the worst for any Democratic Party candidate in American history in the Electoral College (and his 13 electoral votes the fewest any Democrat has won since Stephen A. Douglas claimed 12 in the 1860 election, when the Democratic vote was divided), though others, including Alton B. Parker, James M. Cox, John W. Davis, and George S. McGovern, did worse in the popular vote.
  Psephologists attributed the Republican victory to "Reagan Democrats", millions of Democrats who voted for Reagan, as in 1980. They characterized such Reagan Democrats as southern whites and northern blue collar workers who voted for Reagan because they credited him with the economic recovery, saw Reagan as strong on national security issues, and perceived the Democrats as supporting the poor and minorities at the expense of the middle class. The Democratic National Committee commissioned a study after the election that came to these conclusions, but suppressed the report, afraid that it would offend its key voters. Reagan also benefited from a near-total collapse in the third-party vote, which dropped to just 0.67% of the popular vote, its lowest level since 1964. Despite John B. Anderson's endorsement of Mondale, the overwhelming majority of those who voted for him in 1980 instead voted for Reagan in this election, as did those who voted for Ed Clark in 1980.
  When Reagan was asked in December 1984 what he wanted for Christmas he joked, "Well, Minnesota would have been nice". Reagan lost Minnesota in both this election and in 1980, making it the only state he failed to win in either election, and also making him the first two-term president not to carry Minnesota since Woodrow Wilson. The same feat would later be duplicated by fellow Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush who won both the 2000, and 2004 United States Presidential Elections without winning Minnesota either time. This is the last election where the Republican candidate achieved any of the following: Win every state in the Northeastern and Pacific regions of the United States; win at least one county in every state; and win any of the following states: Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington. It was also the last election where the Republican nominee won Wisconsin until 2016, Iowa until 2004, the last election in which the winning candidate won by a double-digit margin in the percentage of the popular vote, and the last election where the winning candidate won by an eight-digit margin in total popular votes (10 million or more). Finally, despite his narrow loss in Minnesota, Reagan still won in five out of its eight congressional districts (by contrast, Nixon had only carried one Massachusetts district twelve years earlier) thus making Reagan the only U.S. presidential candidate in history to win the popular vote in a majority of congressional districts in every state. In stark contrast, Mondale became the only major-party U.S. presidential candidate since the start of popular presidential elections not to win a majority of the popular vote in even a single state (not counting Stephen A. Douglas in 1860, and William H. Taft in 1912, elections which were both complicated by strong third-party performances, plus the Democratic vote being divided between Douglas and John C. Breckinridge in 1860), having only won 49.5% of the vote in Minnesota.
caption: Margin of victory by state
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