Is the impact of the 1980 Debate overrated

[OSR stands with Israel]

Yah Reagan won it but I rewatched it recently and while Reagan obviously clearly won it was nowhere near the rout in pure terms that Clinton-Bush Town Hall Debate was in 1992, the First Bush-Kerry and First Obama-Romney Debates where Bush Sr, Bush Jr, Obama totally got routed in every way and they basically folded after the first half of the debate.

Yes the polls turned what was a close Reagan win into a landslide win but I think that was more of that the voters wanted to find any reason to turn Carter out and Reagan clearing up any doubts they had in that debate gave them that reason. Even without the debate, I think Reagan still wins by 7 points nationally as the Iran News at the end would have given them the reason to vote Carter out . Carter really just had no chance of coming within 5 points in 1980 without an epic fail type of campaign waged by the GOP Nominee.

The 1980 Election was not as unconventional as people think it was: An unpopular President in bad  economic times at home and bad times as well overseas loses to the charismatic former two term governor of the Largest state in the Union who was the runner up to the party nomination in the previous cycle.

Most of the times the losing party uses the whole Reagan was trailing till the debate myth(and he really even wasnt in the average polls) to mainly give hope to their base that they still have a great chance of winning an election. GOP used it a lot in 2012 and Democrats used it a lot in 2004 as well

[OSR stands with Israel]

The debate probably added a couple of points to the final margin, but the perceived negativity of the October Surprise (that is, no solution to the hostage crisis in Iran) was probably more contributory to the final margin.  This turned a reasonably comfortable victory into a rout for Reagan.  The events of that last week meant the loss of several states (including New York, Massachusetts, and many in the South)--which Carter lost by slim margins. 

Carter was in serious trouble from the start of the general election campaign--with states like Texas and Florida (which he had won in 1976) pretty much out of his reach by early October.  And there were very few (if any) states that he could pick up by that point.

Well in a neutral election I would say Reagan would still pick up Texas and Florida but lose Michigan and Connecticut .

[OSR stands with Israel]

All political debates are useless and nobody wins/loses from a debate

JFK wouldnt have won without the debate as the fundamentals that year clearly favored Nixon

[OSR stands with Israel]

I think it isn't much overrated. I have to admit that Reagan did extremely well (the 2020 Democrat should perform like this). I always felt that his closing statement ("are you better off than you were four years ago?") has the final nail in Carter's reelection coffin. Even if I didn't know the outcome, I would have said "that's it, Carter is done."

Reagan was much weaker in his 1984 debates, probably due to early stages of Alzheimer.

Reagan won that debate hands down but still it didn’t feel like a rout that Bush-Kerry first debate and Obama-Romney first debates were . In Those debates There didn’t seem like a single point where Bush and Obama won an exchange and half way in it felt like both of them just gave up . Carter I beleive got Reagan on one exchange when he pointed our the real Reagan signed tax increases into law as Governor .

What that debate did was ease some doubts that people had about Reagan being a warmonger type cowboy and once that happened Carter was done as that was all he really had left by that stage .


Yah your right Reagan himself said the are you better of than you were 4 years ago was his best line of the debate  not the there you again like like people think .


On the 1984 debates I think it was cause it’s much harder to debate when your the incumbent then challenger since you have to be more on the defensive while as challenger you don’t need to do that . The same thing happened to  Carter , Bush , and Obama where they all lost  the set of debates when they were the incumbents and even Clinton debate performance was worse in 96 than in 92

[OSR stands with Israel]

They didn't have detailed state-by-state polling back then, but I wonder how much Reagan outperformed polling by, with respect to his electoral college votes. He won 10 states by margins of less than 3%, including 7 Southern states.

Carter actually held the electoral college advantage that year in the sense that if the popular vote was tied he would have won

[OSR stands with Israel]

They didn't have detailed state-by-state polling back then, but I wonder how much Reagan outperformed polling by, with respect to his electoral college votes. He won 10 states by margins of less than 3%, including 7 Southern states.

Reagan was already closing the gap going into Jan 1980 from 1979 and even leading Kennedy in hypotheticals





It makes for a far interesting narrative to write that 1980 was coming down to the wire until Reagan knocked it out of the debate that apparently every voter who voted in 1980 watched and they all came to the same conclusion simultaneously.

Carter was never gonna win. The new deal coalition was in the toilet and the economy sucked

Yah Reagan led in average polls from May onwards (though January of 1980 was his low point) and was considered the favorite by betters: http://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/flatview?cuecard=3252

In London, where you can already make a legal wager on the outcome of the American election in November, the odds-makers have installed their favorite. It’s Ronald Reagan, over either Kennedy or Carter

I think reason people attribute to debate is polls showed Reagan was going to win by 3-4 points but he won by 10 instead.


Though in the summer of 1980 they wrote articles like this: https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1980/eirv07n27-19800715/eirv07n27-19800715_048-will_jimmy_carter_destroy_the_de.pdf


and said things like this

The EIR also found that a Carter ticket will spell
disaster for Democratic congressional candidates. A
leading Democratic Party Capitol Hill source conceded
that with Carter heading the ticket, the Democrats expect
to lose more than 50 House seats. This and other sources
say that the GOP will, minimally, come close to overturning the Democratic majority in the Senate. If Carter is
the nominee in 1980, the Democratic leadership says that
a GOP majority in both houses of Congress is possible
by the 1982 elections, for the first time since the 1950s.