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United States presidential election in Vermont, 1980

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Georgia
  
Illinois

44.37%
  
38.41%

Start date
  
November 4, 1980

Popular vote
  
94,598

81,891
  
31,760

38.41%
  
14.90%

Electoral vote
  
3

Home state
  
California

United States presidential election in Vermont, 1980 httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

The 1980 United States Presidential Election in Vermont took place on November 4, 1980 as part of the 1980 United States Presidential Election which was held throughout all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Vermont voted for the Republican nominee Ronald Reagan of California and his running mate George H.W. Bush of Texas. Reagan took 44.37% of the vote to incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s 38.41%, a victory margin of 5.96%. Independent John Anderson took 14.90%.

While winning in a nationwide electoral landslide, Reagan’s victory in Vermont was the weakest victory for a Republican nominee in the Green Mountain State since the founding of the GOP, with only Barry Goldwater having performed worse when he lost the state in the 1964 Democratic landslide.

Long a bastion of liberal Republicanism, Vermont was the only state in the nation to swing Democratic in 1980, having delivered a more comfortable 11.20% margin of victory to moderate Republican Gerald Ford just four years earlier in 1976, even as the rest of the nation swung hard toward the GOP in 1980. Whereas Ford had swept every county in the state of Vermont, Reagan lost two Northwestern counties, Chittenden and Grand Isle, to Carter. The conservative Reagan would bleed a substantial amount of support in the state to John Anderson, who had been a liberal Republican congressman before mounting his independent bid for the presidency.

This election would mark the beginning of Vermont’s transition from a staunchly Republican state to being one of the most Democratic states. Ronald Reagan represented the ascendency of the conservative movement within the modern Republican Party, a party which would become increasingly dominated by conservatives, Southerners, and Evangelical Christians during and after Reagan's administration. Vermont would consequently begin shifting increasingly toward the Democrats in the years to come. It is a highly Democratic state today, as of 2017, as it has been for nearly 25 years.

References

United States presidential election in Vermont, 1980 Wikipedia


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