WI: Carter wins in 1980?

Let's say Jimmy Carter wins in 1980. What does the political landscape look like in the 80's and 90's? Is there any scenario where Carter could have beaten Reagan in 1980? I have read he was leading in some polls. What would a Carter win do to the conservative movement? Does Mondale get elected in 1984 then? Does Reagan run again in 1984?
 
reagan-gallup-1980.gif

Maybe Carter wins the debate, it was close until then. But most likely that's not enough. Eagle Claw succeeding seems implausible. No Volcker appointment I think would help as Volcker's shock therapy, while helpful in the long term, caused a recession in the short term and he was a nightmare for Carter. The Kennedy challenge and the dissatisfaction of the Democratic base hurt Carter too, the Democrats were divided and weak, there was widespread dissatisfaction with Carter in his base, they felt let down by and disappointed with Carter. A lot of people regarded the three candidates as virtually the same, in fact turnout in 1980 decreased from 1976(1980 turnout was at 52.6%), which was also regarded as an uninspiring choice. Fundamentally though Carter was almost certainly doomed given how his presidency had gone. So you would need to disqualify Reagan, maybe Carter wins the debates, gets a late release of the hostages or the October Surprise conspiracy theory is true and is revealed to the public. I think the debate would be Carter's final chance, though Reagan would need to only do OK, as like Trump this year he had a lower bar to clear in that he just needed to prove he was not too extreme or dangerous. So let's say Reagan messes up the debate and Carter pulls a squeaker, maybe another factor put in there too.

The Democrats probably keep the Senate in this scenario given a lot of the races were quite close. However they will likely lose both houses in 1982. Carter has scored an upset re-election, but it was more a rejection of his opponent and still it was close. Congress is quite conservative, but he isn't very liberal. Carter's focus is probably to try and balance the budget, so no big tax cuts. The economy may be in recession for longer, perhaps this hurts Mondale in 1984. Carter may also try some kind of welfare reform. He never had a big agenda or vision though, that indeed was problematic for his presidency. He likely limps along, with a bit more of a hawkish foreign policy and no more detente but not nearly as much as Reagan. In 1984 a moderate Republican like Bush likely wins the nomination and the presidency and gets to oversee a growing economy and pass some tax cuts and all, but no conservative revolution under him. Alternatively, if the economy has recovered fully Mondale could possibly squeak a victory, though Al Gore lost during boom times, and then govern at least for one term and adopt a more liberal agenda, including perhaps universal healthcare or the like, though Congress is a problem. The Reagan Revolution is delayed but there still is a shift to the right and liberals are not that happy.
 
Carter lost the election in large measure because of the dual foreign policy crises of 1979/1980.

If for whatever reason Afganistan and Iran don't happen he would stand a surprisingly strong chance at victory. Albeit there's a risk that without that situation Ted Kennedy beats him in the primaries.

Even if for some set of circumstances delay the Iranian Revolution until after the 1980 election-Carter might just pull off a close upset.

Even the economy might be slightly better with no Iranian crisis.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to know whether such an outcome was possible-whether the Iranian Revolution could have been avoided or at least delayed until after the election?

Say the Shah's cancer is worse-and he dies before the Revolution occurred historically-would that be enough to delay the Revolution?

Or would the transition the Shah's death would inevitably entail make the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran even easier than it was?

Somehow avoiding or delaying the Iranian Revolution is probably the key to a Carter reelection-the problem is that result is out of his hands
 
trialheats1980-1024x744[1].png
reagan-gallup-1980.gif

Maybe Carter wins the debate, it was close until then.

Using the Gallup poll alone is very misleading. Yes, Gallup showed Carter a bit ahead in October before the debate but it was an outlier in this respect.

"But there is another apparent misconception in the Romney campaign, which Nate Silver rightly picked up on in a tweet: Carter didn’t lead Reagan for much of the campaign. Below is a graph of all the polls, plus a smoothed trendline. The public polls were graciously provided by Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien, who use similar data from every election from 1952-2008 in their forthcoming book, The Timeline of Presidential Elections—which everyone should buy. I’ve supplemented their data with some late private polls conducted by the two campaigns, which are available in this paper by Warren Mitofsky.

"At the end of the campaign, Reagan did surge, but this only increased his lead. His surge appears to have been brought on first by the debate, and then perhaps by several other events in the final week of the campaign. To quote Mitofsky:
During that same final week, Richard Allen resigned from the Reagan campaign for an alleged misuse of influence during his Nixon White House days. The same day Carter’s congressional liaison, Frank Moore, resigned after repeating the unsubstantiated story of the Ayatollah’s cancer. On Friday of that week the final economic indicator of the campaign showed inflation still seriously on the rise. And on Sunday morning, November i, the Iranian parliament announced their conditions for freeing the American hostages. Jimmy Carter immediately abandoned campaigning and appeared on national television in the early evening to repeat much of what the public had been hearing all day. It was a week, in effect, with much that could affect the choices made by voters..." http://themonkeycage.org/2012/08/what-really-happened-in-the-1980-presidential-campaign/

I have attached a chart that uses poll averaging instead of relying exclusively on Gallup.
 
reagan-gallup-1980.gif

Maybe Carter wins the debate, it was close until then. But most likely that's not enough. Eagle Claw succeeding seems implausible. No Volcker appointment I think would help as Volcker's shock therapy, while helpful in the long term, caused a recession in the short term and he was a nightmare for Carter. The Kennedy challenge and the dissatisfaction of the Democratic base hurt Carter too, the Democrats were divided and weak, there was widespread dissatisfaction with Carter in his base, they felt let down by and disappointed with Carter. A lot of people regarded the three candidates as virtually the same, in fact turnout in 1980 decreased from 1976(1980 turnout was at 52.6%), which was also regarded as an uninspiring choice. Fundamentally though Carter was almost certainly doomed given how his presidency had gone. So you would need to disqualify Reagan, maybe Carter wins the debates, gets a late release of the hostages or the October Surprise conspiracy theory is true and is revealed to the public. I think the debate would be Carter's final chance, though Reagan would need to only do OK, as like Trump this year he had a lower bar to clear in that he just needed to prove he was not too extreme or dangerous. So let's say Reagan messes up the debate and Carter pulls a squeaker, maybe another factor put in there too.

The Democrats probably keep the Senate in this scenario given a lot of the races were quite close. However they will likely lose both houses in 1982. Carter has scored an upset re-election, but it was more a rejection of his opponent and still it was close. Congress is quite conservative, but he isn't very liberal. Carter's focus is probably to try and balance the budget, so no big tax cuts. The economy may be in recession for longer, perhaps this hurts Mondale in 1984. Carter may also try some kind of welfare reform. He never had a big agenda or vision though, that indeed was problematic for his presidency. He likely limps along, with a bit more of a hawkish foreign policy and no more detente but not nearly as much as Reagan. In 1984 a moderate Republican like Bush likely wins the nomination and the presidency and gets to oversee a growing economy and pass some tax cuts and all, but no conservative revolution under him. Alternatively, if the economy has recovered fully Mondale could possibly squeak a victory, though Al Gore lost during boom times, and then govern at least for one term and adopt a more liberal agenda, including perhaps universal healthcare or the like, though Congress is a problem. The Reagan Revolution is delayed but there still is a shift to the right and liberals are not that happy.


Would the Reagan Revolution necessarily be delayed and not derailed? How many chances at bat can the conservative movement take before it starts to unravel? At the very least I don't think we can say it would take the same form it did IOTL. Specifically, without Reagan, the 'strictly-business' wing of the GOP has no reason to align so closely with social conservatives. A Bush victory in '84 seems more likely to me than a Mondale victory. Bush won't get too cozy with the Moral Majority, and business leaders will follow his example.

But even if Mondale did win, the partisan shift from the South might become stalled as it's clear the Republican promise to southern conservatives has been an empty one. Why not stick with the winning party and be listened to?
 
Top