890,877 569,597 Start date November 6, 1984 | 60.7% 38.8% | |
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The 1984 United States presidential election in Connecticut took place on November 6, 1984. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1984 United States presidential election. Connecticut voters chose 8 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the President and Vice President of the United States.
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Connecticut 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 Connecticut, with over 99% of the electorate voting only either Democratic or Republican, and only four parties appearing on the ballot. Every county in Connecticut voted in majority for the Republican candidate.
Connecticut weighed in for this election as 2% more Republican than the national average.
Republican victory
Reagan won the election in Connecticut with a resounding 22 point sweep-out landslide. Typically a liberal-leaning state, the election results in Connecticut 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 Atlantic Northeast, 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 promise 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 Connecticut, 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 Connecticut and elsewhere.