A couple of ideas about the U.S. presidential debates from 1980...

Thande

Donor
As I understand it, Reagan originally insisted on including John Anderson (who was running as an independent candidate after failing to win the Republican nomination) in the debates, as he like most people at the time believed that Anderson would cut into Carter's vote. For the same reason, Carter refused. However it's worth noting that modern analysts seem to believe that Anderson actually cut about equally into Carter's and Reagan's votes. Anyway, Reagan eventually backed down and the usual two-man debates were held.

So, a couple of alternatives:

1) What if Carter had given way and allowed Anderson to participate? Would Anderson have significantly increased his vote share if he had had this much more exposure?

2) What if the disagreements over the debates were not resolved at all and the debates were never held? Remember, 1980 is only the third time televised presidential debates were held (1960 and 1976 being the others) so it's not as big a thing for them not to happen as it would be to-day. Would Reagan have achieved his crushing victory without his strong performance in the debates?

One for the U.S. political scholars.
 
Anderson might have had the ability to win Vermont and possibly even New Hampshire and maybe, just maybe Maine.

If the debates weren't held, Reagan probably would have still won a landslide victory, although maybe by a lesser landslide. It was the debates that really set a Reagan mega-landslide set in stone. Perhaps Carter could somehow take New York.
 
Reagan still would have won. He had an unique ability to talk BS and get people to believe it. Carter was (and is) a great man but not good at telling people how the country needed to do things. Too much like a substitute teacher chewing on kids who did not want to listen in class.
 
For the first scenario, absolutely, Anderson would have done leagues better had he participated in the later debates. The fact is is that the one debate he participated in, he did not give the sort of appearance that he should of given, and it paled in comparison to how he did in the Republican debates. If he could have recovered from that first debacle and done better in the later two, it stands to reason that he would have gotten into the double digits at least. Would this have meant he would have won any states? Probably not, though if he DID, they would be in the New England area.

For the second scenario, Carter is going to do much better since Reagan is not going to be able to give those knock-out punches he did during that final debate. It would be a margin of maybe two or three points compared to the ten it was, with Reagan still having a comfortable lead in the electoral vote.
 
Reagan still wins handily, but the best I suspect Anderson could do is start a Reform Party-like movement after the election that does not take off (if it does at all) until the nineties.
 
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