Did Carter have one of the unluckiest Electoral College results in 1980?

[TheTide]

Losing the popular vote by around 10% instead of around 8% (which is still substantial) made the difference between perhaps 150-200 electoral votes and less than 50 electoral votes, assuming a uniform swing. Back in the days of the Solid South, Cox (for example) got well over 100 electoral votes in losing to Harding in 1920 whilst losing the popular vote by, I think, the biggest ever margin for a major party candidate in a contested presidential election.

Reagan'a "Are you better off now?" probably didn't swing the election, but it probably turned the electoral map into one of humiliation for Carter.

[RINO Tom]

On this topic, I really do not think enough people appreciate (A) how close a lot of the Southern states were but (B) how concentrated Reagan's victory margins were in Southern suburban counties that were simply not as populous in the days of the Solid South:



Look at how much of the rural South stuck with the Democrats, and yet the only "Southern" states Carter won were his home state of Georgia and West Virginia.  These wins for Reagan are super close, too:

Tennessee: 48.70% GOP, 48.41% DEM
Alabama: 48.75% GOP, 47.45% DEM
Arkansas: 48.13% GOP, 47.52% DEM
Kentucky: 49.07% GOP, 47.61% DEM
North Carolina: 49.30% GOP, 47.18% DEM
Mississippi: 49.42% GOP, 48.09% DEM
South Carolina: 49.57% GOP, 48.04% DEM

Only Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and Virginia were really out of reach.  Carter also almost won Massachusetts, even with Anderson.  A very minor shift could have given us this map:



EDIT: This post made me think of a funny memory from college.  I cannot remember the class, but our professor was kind of glossing over politics in the 1980s, and he put up a county map of the 1980 election, more or less just to show that Reagan won handily.  I was already an Atlas nerd by this point, so I laughed when he said something to the effect of, "As you can see, Carter only won a handful of states in the Deep South, and Reagan won pretty much everything else."  Without a state by state map, that assumption is very easy to make.

[Mr. Smith]

Perhaps, but the tipping point was still in his favor by a decent margin.

[E-Dawg]

Humphrey 1968 also got pretty unlucky, getting 110 fewer electoral votes than Nixon despite being only 0.7% behind Nixon in the nationwide popular vote.

[Pericles]

In terms of almost all the close states being narrow Reagan wins, this is a good point. Ironically, despite his Electoral College advantage, a similar thing happened to Trump in 2020 because most of the close states were narrow Biden wins. A 2 point shift to the left just gives him NC and 321 EV, but 2 points to the right gives Trump 4 states, the presidency and 57 more EVs-a 3 point shift is even more dramatic as Biden still gets just 321 EV if that goes towards him but if it goes to Trump he gains six states and 79 EV.

[sting in the rafters]

The Anderson effect is grossly overstated but it definitely cost Carter at least Massachusetts and perhaps NY

[Alben Barkley]

Carter went all-in on trying to actually win by hitting the big swing states and hoping he would win all those Southern states he ended up just barely losing with minimal investment, because he knew that if he lost them, the election was already over.

Unfortunately, the end result was basically the worst case scenario for Carter. He would be seen as a more respectable loser at least if he managed to win all the states that were within just 2%. It's undoubtedly one of the unluckiest EC results.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Bush 1992 is another as he lost the EC by a worse margin than McCain 2008 but a 4.7 point shift to the right is all Bush needed for a win.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

1976 had a lot of swing states. In fact, a majority had a margin of less than 6%. Tons of swing states means it doesn't take much of a win to end up with a blowout in the electoral college.

[TML]

Remember the there was a big polling error in 1980, and it was the biggest such error in modern political history (from 1972 onwards) according to 538. The final NPV polling average, as calculated using 538’s model, would have been R+2.1, which was 7.6 points off the actual NPV of R+9.7. Considering that the tipping point state was IL with a margin of R+7.9, this definitely suggests that polls back then would have shown a close race which turned out to be anything but close.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

George McClellan also was unlucky. The margin as a fraction of the 2 party vote was actually closer in 1864 than 1980, and yet Lincoln got 91% of the electoral votes.

[TML]

George McClellan also was unlucky. The margin as a fraction of the 2 party vote was actually closer in 1864 than 1980, and yet Lincoln got 91% of the electoral votes.

Actually, in 1864 McClellan had an EC advantage, as the tipping point state was 1.3 points more Democratic than the NPV. It's just that McClellan got blown out in the NPV so the EC result was still very lopsided.

[Pericles]

George McClellan also was unlucky. The margin as a fraction of the 2 party vote was actually closer in 1864 than 1980, and yet Lincoln got 91% of the electoral votes.

Actually, in 1864 McClellan had an EC advantage, as the tipping point state was 1.3 points more Democratic than the NPV. It's just that McClellan got blown out in the NPV so the EC result was still very lopsided.

In the way I assume jfern meant though, McClellan was unlucky. Of all the states that were within single digit margins, 8 were Lincoln margins and if they'd gone the other way he'd have lost 110 electoral votes and the presidency. Only two states were close McClellan wins. Even within 5%, there were 3 close Lincoln states (worth 65 electoral votes) and just Delaware (3 electoral votes) for McClellan.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

George McClellan also was unlucky. The margin as a fraction of the 2 party vote was actually closer in 1864 than 1980, and yet Lincoln got 91% of the electoral votes.

Actually, in 1864 McClellan had an EC advantage, as the tipping point state was 1.3 points more Democratic than the NPV. It's just that McClellan got blown out in the NPV so the EC result was still very lopsided.

He was unlucky as compared to 1980, he actually got a higher percent of the 2 party vote and a lower percentage of the electoral vote.

[Cape Verde]

Perhaps, but the tipping point was still in his favor by a decent margin.

Ironically, this is true. Illinois was the tipping point state. Reagan won Illinois by 7.93%, while winning the national vote by 9.74%.

[Sir Mohamed]

Kind of, due to Anderson being on the ballot. That for sure cost him states like MA and NY. And he also was unlucky in a number of Southern states like TN, in which he lost just by tiny margins like 49-48%. It's kind of odd Reagan won 3 EVs more than Johnson in 1964, who beat Goldwater by a margin of more than 22 pts. instead of 10.

[nclib]

I remember hearing that if all the third-party voters had gone to Carter, Carter would have won the EC while Reagan would still have won the PV.

[Arbitrage1980]

Losing the popular vote by around 10% instead of around 8% (which is still substantial) made the difference between perhaps 150-200 electoral votes and less than 50 electoral votes, assuming a uniform swing. Back in the days of the Solid South, Cox (for example) got well over 100 electoral votes in losing to Harding in 1920 whilst losing the popular vote by, I think, the biggest ever margin for a major party candidate in a contested presidential election.

Reagan'a "Are you better off now?" probably didn't swing the election, but it probably turned the electoral map into one of humiliation for Carter.

Without the Iranian hostage crisis, the election would have been closer to Reagan 350-375 EV than the 489 EV landslide. That humiliated the country, and as commander-in-chief, Carter got the blame.

The Southern states except GA, VA, TX, FL, were all within a few points. Anderson cost Carter NY+MA.

[TDAS04]

George McClellan also was unlucky. The margin as a fraction of the 2 party vote was actually closer in 1864 than 1980, and yet Lincoln got 91% of the electoral votes.

Not as unlucky as Stephen Douglas four years earlier, in that sense. A solid second place finisher in the popular vote, but how many electoral votes did Douglas get? 12. LOL, he couldn’t even obtain a majority of electoral votes from New Jersey, a state from which he received the majority of popular votes (granted, it’s somewhat more complicated due to the fusion ticket). Douglas also barely carried Missouri. That’s it.

[Mechavada]

George McClellan also was unlucky. The margin as a fraction of the 2 party vote was actually closer in 1864 than 1980, and yet Lincoln got 91% of the electoral votes.

Not as unlucky as Stephen Douglas four years earlier, in that sense. A solid second place finisher in the popular vote, but how many electoral votes did Douglas get? 12. LOL, he couldn’t even obtain a majority of electoral votes from New Jersey, a state from which he received the majority of popular votes (granted, it’s somewhat more complicated due to the fusion ticket). Douglas also barely carried Missouri. That’s it.

I have to admit: playing as Douglas in the 1860 Campaign Trail game and trying to just get a DEADLOCK has to be one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.  If there was ANY major party candidate who was caught between a rock and a hard place it was that man lol.

[President Johnson]

George McClellan also was unlucky. The margin as a fraction of the 2 party vote was actually closer in 1864 than 1980, and yet Lincoln got 91% of the electoral votes.

Agreed. The same is true for Winfield Scott in 1852. Pierce won the popular vote by just less than seven points, 50.8-43.9%, but 85% of the Electoral College.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

George McClellan also was unlucky. The margin as a fraction of the 2 party vote was actually closer in 1864 than 1980, and yet Lincoln got 91% of the electoral votes.

Depending on ones interpretation of whether seceded states not appointing electors should have their electoral votes counted in determining how many electoral votes are needed to win, there may have had to be a Congressional vote if McClellan had done 4 points better.