page_title: Ronald Reagan 1980 presidential campaign
section_title: Political positions
hierarchical_section_title: Ronald Reagan 1980 presidential campaign / Political positions
caption_attribution_description: Ronald Reagan campaigning with Nancy Reagan in Columbia, South Carolina. 10/10/80.
context_page_description: Ronald Reagan, the 33rd Governor of California, announced his candidacy for President of the United States in New York City on November 13, 1979. On July 17, 1980, he became the nominee of the Republican Party for the 1980 presidential election. After receiving the Republican nomination, he selected one of his opponents in the primary elections, George H. W. Bush, to be his running mate.
  On November 4, 1980, Reagan carried 44 of 50 states and received 489 electoral votes to win the election. Jimmy Carter, the incumbent president, carried six states, as well as Washington, D.C., and received 49 electoral votes. Reagan won 50.7 percent of the popular vote, Carter took 41 percent, and Independent John B. Anderson received 6.7 percent. Reagan's election as President was completed with the meeting of the Electoral College on December 15, 1980, and with the subsequent certification of the college's vote by the Joint session of Congress on January 6, 1981.
context_section_description: The United States in the 1970s underwent "stagflation"—a wrenching period of low economic growth, high inflation and high interest rates and intermittent energy crises. Reagan was an adherent of supply-side economics, which argues that economic growth can be most effectively created using incentives for people to produce (supply) goods and services, such as adjusting income tax and capital gains tax rates. Accordingly, Reagan promised an economic revival that would affect all sectors of the population. Reagan theorized that cutting tax rates would actually increase tax revenues because the lower rates would cause people to work harder as they would be able to keep more of their money.
  Reagan called for a drastic cut in "big government" and pledged to deliver a balanced budget for the first time since 1969. In the primaries, Bush famously called Reagan's economic policy "voodoo economics" because it promised to lower taxes and increase revenues at the same time.
caption: Ronald and Nancy Reagan campaigning with Strom Thurmond in Columbia, South Carolina.
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