1980 United States presidential election in Virginia

1980 United States presidential election in Virginia

← 1976 November 4, 1980 1984 →
 
Nominee Ronald Reagan Jimmy Carter John B. Anderson
Party Republican Democratic Independent
Home state California Georgia Illinois
Running mate George H. W. Bush Walter Mondale Patrick Lucey
Electoral vote 12 0 0
Popular vote 989,609 752,174 95,418
Percentage 53.03% 40.31% 5.11%

County and Independent City Results

President before election

Jimmy Carter
Democratic

Elected President

Ronald Reagan
Republican

The 1980 United States presidential election in Virginia took place on November 4, 1980. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1980 United States presidential election. Virginia voters chose twelve electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president of the United States.

Virginia had voted Republican at all but one of the previous seven presidential elections, largely due to its large white Washington and Richmond suburbs that received large-scale in-migration from the traditionally Republican Northeast,[1] alongside the Shenandoah Valley,[2] being amongst the first traditionally Democratic areas of the former Confederacy to turn Republican at both the presidential level and in federal congressional elections.[3] After the collapse of the Byrd Organization and the expansion of the state's formerly small electorate via the Voting Rights Act, these trends intensified except in the heavily unionized coalfield portions of Southwest Virginia, where unlike elsewhere in the former Confederacy, many newly registered poor and working-class whites voted Democratic. In addition to voting Republican in six of seven presidential elections, the state's Congressional delegation would gain a Republican majority as early as the 91st Congress. Nevertheless, it was 1970 before significant GOP gains occurred in the state legislature, and it was generally acknowledged that President Nixon offered no support to down-ballot Republican candidates as he was carrying the state by a landslide margin against George McGovern,[4] who lost every county or city in the state except Charles City.

  1. ^ Heinemann, Ronald L. (2008). Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: A History of Virginia, 1607-2007. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. p. 357. ISBN 0813927692.
  2. ^ Phillips, Kevin P. (1969). The Emerging Republican Majority. pp. 260–266. ISBN 0870000586.
  3. ^ Atkinson, Frank B. (2006). The Dynamic Dominion: Realignment and the Rise of Two-party Competition in Virginia, 1945-1980. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742552098.
  4. ^ Evans, Rowland; Novak, Robert (October 16, 1972). "Consider Virginia: McGovern, Nixon Creating a No-Party System in South". The Miami Herald. pp. 7-A.