821,818 454,974 Start date November 6, 1984 | 63.4% 35.1% | |
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The 1984 United States presidential election in Colorado took place on November 6, 1984. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1984 United States presidential election. Colorado voters chose 8 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the President and Vice President of the United States.
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Colorado was won by incumbent United States President Ronald Reagan of California, who was running against former Vice President Walter Mondale of Minnesota. Reagan ran for a second time with former C.I.A. Director George H. W. Bush of Texas, and Mondale ran with Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York, the first major female candidate for the Vice-Presidency.
Partisan background
The presidential election of 1984 was a very partisan election for Colorado, with over 98% of the electorate voting for either the Democratic or Republican parties, though several parties appeared on the ballot. As was typical for the time, the large majority of counties in Colorado voted mainly for the Republican candidate. Since the election, the trend of Colorado becoming a swing state became apparent in the elections of the 1990s and 2000s. Reagan did best in Rio Blanco County, and Mondale did the best in Costilla County, along the Southern Rockies.
Republican victory
Reagan won the election in Colorado with a resounding 28 point sweep-out landslide. These very decisive results in Colorado, which was rapidly transitioning toward swing state by this time, are reflective of a nationwide reconsolidation of base for the Republican Party which took place through the 1980s; called by Reagan the "second American Revolution." This was most evident during the 1984 presidential election. No Republican candidate has received as strong of support in the American West at large, as Reagan did.
It is speculated that Mondale lost support with voters nearly immediately during the campaign, namely during his acceptance speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. There he stated that he intended to increase taxes. To quote Mondale, "By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two thirds. Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did." Despite this claimed attempt at establishing truthfulness with the electorate, this claim to raise taxes badly eroded his chances in what had already begun as an uphill battle against the charismatic Ronald Reagan.
Reagan also enjoyed high levels of bipartisan support during the 1984 presidential election, both in Colorado, and across the nation at large. Many registered Democrats who voted for Reagan (Reagan Democrats) stated that they had chosen to do so because they associated him with the economic recovery, because of his strong stance on national security issues with Russia, and because they considered the Democrats as "supporting American poor and minorities at the expense of the middle class." These public opinion factors contributed to Reagan’s 1984 landslide victory, in Colorado and elsewhere.