There are all sorts of things I don't get here. Like how on earth Georgia will go for a northeastern liberal, or how Florida will go for any Democrat at all in 1980 after Mariel. Or why Kennedy carries Kentucky, where the Kennedys have never been very popular (Nixon won it easily in 1960, and Jimmy Carter's 67-23 victory over EMK in the OTL 1980 Democratic primary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_1980 wasn't due *solely* to Chappaquiddick.)

Who is the Vice-President? If it's a Southerner, that'd could have swayed a lot of states to Ted.
 
Not really. Even the "home state" advantage a vice-presidential nominee adds to the ticket in his own state has been debated, and seems small (especially in large states). http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-vice-president-qa-20160702-snap-htmlstory.html Any *regional* advantage would have to be negligible.

I read through the article and looked into the data on the Republican 1980 Primaries and I could see Kennedy picking up some Southern states because of George H. W. Bush's lack of much sway in the South. He lost most of the South by a lot to Reagan and even though his home state was Texas by that point, he originally is from Connecticut.
 
I read through the article and looked into the data on the Republican 1980 Primaries and I could see Kennedy picking up some Southern states because of George H. W. Bush's lack of much sway in the South. He lost most of the South by a lot to Reagan and even though his home state was Texas by that point, he originally is from Connecticut.

OTOH, EMK did terribly against Carter in the South. And it's hard for me to see people who backed Reagan over Bush because they considered Bush insufficiently conservative voting for Kennedy.

In any event, I just can't see EMK carrying Georgia (where he got 8 percent of the vote against Carter) or Florida (which he lost to Carter 61%-23% despite dissatisfaction with Carter among Jewish voters--and which in any event turned very heavily against not only Carter but the Democrats in general after Mariel). Kentucky also showed no tendency to favor northern liberal Democrats (JFK, Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis all performed below their national averages there).

And above all, history shows that when an incumbent president is unpopular, voters are going to hold it against his party--even candidates of that party opposed to the president. (Consider Bryan in 1896.)
 
Eagleton? Wasn't he thoroughly discredited by 1972? I don't think the US in 1980 would be ready to accept a VP with mental health issues.
 
Surely no Chappaquddick and no Eagleton drop-out is going to have butterflies? It seems a bit too convenient for nothing else to change.
 
Surely no Chappaquddick and no Eagleton drop-out is going to have butterflies? It seems a bit too convenient for nothing else to change.
The 72 election in this TL is still a blowout but McGovern wins about 2 or 3 more states

Ted Kennedy was actually the running mate ITTL's 72 election.
 
OTOH, EMK did terribly against Carter in the South. And it's hard for me to see people who backed Reagan over Bush because they considered Bush insufficiently conservative voting for Kennedy.

In any event, I just can't see EMK carrying Georgia (where he got 8 percent of the vote against Carter) or Florida (which he lost to Carter 61%-23% despite dissatisfaction with Carter among Jewish voters--and which in any event turned very heavily against not only Carter but the Democrats in general after Mariel). Kentucky also showed no tendency to favor northern liberal Democrats (JFK, Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis all performed below their national averages there).

And above all, history shows that when an incumbent president is unpopular, voters are going to hold it against his party--even candidates of that party opposed to the president. (Consider Bryan in 1896.)

Well to be fair, Carter was more centrist and from Georgia. If we can hold off the perception of Democrats being liberal and Republicans being conservative being taken as an absolute (which began with the Civil Rights Act but IMO wasn't driven home until Reagan's election), then the Dems would be able to do much better in the South (if not in Kentucky).

Thomas Eagleton

Eagleton would be disastorous. He had to semi-regularly be hospitalized, which is not a state that a VP candidate should be on tbe campaign trail. Even if it remained a secret until 1980, I can't see it remaining that way
 
Sorry a little late but why would Kennedy pick Eagleton after he was George McGovern runner in 1972. However suffering from bouts of depression throughout his life, resulting in several hospitalizations, which were kept secret from the public and when they were revealed it humiliated the McGovern campaign and Eagleton was forced to quit the race.
 
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