Talk Elections

I'm lumping in POTUS and midterm elections

1868 should probably be on this list. It proved that, even with the South brought back into the Union, the GOP could still dominate.

1980.

100% very few presidents have been able to win all the regions in America but Reagan did it twice.
Plus didn’t the GOP pick up 12 senate seats?

1980 or 1994

I'd probably say 1984 for presidential elections--Reagan came within 4,000 votes of getting all 50 states.  After that, probably 1972 and possibly 1864.

For midterms, probably 1994.  Not 2010; it wasn't that great an election for the GOP anyway.  They would've won much bigger if it weren't for so many lousy Tea Party candidates.  2014 was overall a much better year for them IMO.

I'd honestly say 1994

1980, 1994, and maybe 2010.

Midterms: 1994, with 2010 close behind

Presidential: 1984.

2016 was a good night for the GOP considering that Clinton was expected to win by heavy margins.

1972. It showed how strong the "silent majority" was.

Voted 1920.

1872.

Should 1946 be on the list? Of course, the 80th Congress is best known for passing the Taft-Hartley Act and getting booted out two years later-- but I'm sure the excitement in GOP-land was nice while it lasted.

1980 -- a resounding victory over an incumbent has a better taste to it than landslide re-elections of incumbents (1956, 1972, 1984).

It's a close call between 1980 and 1994. In both cases, the election results were a culmination of changes in public opinion that had been building for some time: For example, in 1980, growing middle- and working-class resentment of the perceived largesse of those on welfare, California's anti-tax Proposition 13, enacted in 1978, and a more conservative trend in general; in 1994, growing disapproval of Clinton's health-care overhaul and a growing sense that many members of Congress had been in power far too long, with growing support for term limits.

The only reasons I went with 1994 (and I could just as well have picked 1980) is that (1) in 1980, the GOP failed to take the House (I have no doubt that Clinton would have lost on an up-or-down vote in 1994); (2) the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress, like Trump's 2016 win, happened essentially without "celebrity" support (in contrast, in 1980 Frank Sinatra, Tom Selleck, and Eugene McCarthy were among those who endorsed Reagan, who was himself a Hollywood celebrity).

In terms of exceeding expectations, 2016: the general consensus was that Clinton would win by a margin somewhere between Obama's 2008 and 2012 wins and that the Dems would retake the Senate, but in the end, the GOP ended up with total control of government.

In some ways, 1994: It cemented the philosophy of the Reagan Revolution and forced an otherwise populist Southerner to move to the right.  Plus, it was the beginning of the end for the Democrats in the South, at least on a federal level.