Presidential Election of 1984

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION of 1984 was fought between incumbent President Ronald Reagan for the Republican Party, and former Vice President Walter Mondale for the Democratic Party. Reagan's running mate was Vice President George H.W. Bush, and Mon-dale's running mate was Representative Geraldine Fer-raro of New York. Reagan won with nearly 60 percent of the popular vote and an overwhelming 525 out of 538 electoral votes, while Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota (which he won by barely 4,000 votes) and the District of Columbia. Reagan's landslide victory was the worst defeat for any Democratic presidential candidate in U.S. history.

Reagan was elected in 1980 on a platform of tax cuts and deregulation, but during his first term in office, his popularity ratings were among the lowest ratings received by first-term presidents elected since 1945. In late October 1983, near the start of the 1984 presidential campaign season, Reagan's foreign policy experienced both severe crisis and notable success in the course of approximately 72 hours.

On October 23, 1983, two truck bombs struck the barracks that housed members of the U.S. and French military forces in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French soldiers. The U.S. military had been sent as part of a peacekeeping force in the Lebanese civil war, and the devastating bombing renewed calls by Reagan's political opponents to remove U.S. troops from Lebanon. This particular low point of Reagan's foreign policy was followed two days later by the successful invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada, where the U.S. military was able to overthrow a hard-line Marxist government that had been established by a coup on October 19. The invasion was condemned by a number of American allies—not least of who was British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher—and Democratic presidential candidates criticized Reagan's decision to invade as “trigger-happy” gunboat diplomacy. Yet in contrast to the bombings in Lebanon, the invasion of Grenada was fast and successful with very minor casualties, and the resulting publicity was a public-relations coup for Reagan's foreign policy. Both Reagan and Bush were re-nominated at the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas, in the summer of 1984.

In contrast, the race for the Democratic nomination featured many candidates, all of whom hoped to capitalize on Reagan's unpopular domestic and foreign policies, and appeal to voters. The initial primaries reduced the candidates to two; Senator Gary Hart from Colorado and former Vice President Walter Mondale. Hart and Mondale ran a close race in the primaries, with Hart winning the important New Hampshire, Ohio, and California primaries, and showing stronger support in the western states.

A third candidate, the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson of Illinois, came in third behind Mondale and Hart. Jackson was the second African American to run for the presidency, and he had managed to gain backing from minority voters. But at the Democratic National Convention, in San Francisco, California, Jackson received less than 500 votes to Hart's 1,200, and both of them trailed the nearly 2,200 votes that Mondale received. As the presidential nominee, Mondale chose the New York City-based Representative Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate.

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