Talk Elections

In October 1980, Carter had a ~35% approval rate. So, he overperformed ~5 points. Maybe, it was anti-Reagan vote. If all the voters who approved Carter had voted for him, all Anderson voters disapproved Carter. 65% voters disapproved Carter, and Reagan had "only" 51%.
Would another republican have had a higher margin?
At that time, maybe the theory which says that more close to center candidates have more votes was valid. We could observe this in 1964 and 1972.

Someone like H.W probably would have done better in the PV than Reagan, but he also would have lost some Southern states that Reagan very narrowly won.

This. The only other Republicans that ran in 1980 that could come close to doing as well as Reagan in the south were Howard Baker and John Connally, both long shot candidates.

HW's home state was Texas.
He was born in Massachusetts, but he moved to the South after the WW2

I thought Connally only became a long shot candidate after Atwater made voters think Connally was bribing black ministers for endorsements.

Probably not.

No.

Lower, or in some cases, even losing again.

Probably. They couldn't be called Ronald Raygun after all.

There is literally no way a candidate can make a 10 point difference unless they are just record breaking bad candidates which none of the 1980 GOP candidate were .


Also Reagan’s debate performance is overrated, he won that debate big cause people already wanted Carter out they were just afraid Reagan would start WW3 or eliminate social security. So when Reagan proves those fears were false polls swung towards him .

No. In any case without Reagan, it's a closer election. Poppy Bush is no Reagan, Anderson is no Reagan, Baker is no Reagan, Connally is no Reagan, Dole is no Reagan; hell, Ford is no Reagan. But any of them would've still killed Carter in 1980. It was just a Republican year.


No. Carter was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time for 1980, & again, anybody would've still killed him in 1980. It was just that Republican of a year.

Can't underestimate the power of incumbency though, and there's still the reasonable grip on The South that even Reagan had some time getting through, along with the natural hold on The Northeast.

While I have little doubts about where the popular vote would go, whether it would be enough to beat the Electoral College advantage Carter had is another story. I mean, would Dole have been able to crack The South? Would Connally or Baker been able to flip The Northeast and Midwest? Where would Reagan have ended up if Anderson hadn't eaten away in The Northeast/Wisconsin/Illinois?

Texas and Florida is probably the only parts of the south the GOP needed other then Virginia

Regardless of candidate, there's no doubt that any of them would've not only been able to keep the states that Ford had won in 1976, but add the bare minimum (Ohio & Texas) that would've then been needed to put them over the top & win.

Connally would have been likely to lose Massachusetts, New York, Delaware and possibly Wisconsin, and Dole would quite plausibly have lost some of the close states in the South.

Baker, a fellow Southerner, is the only one who I feel might have been able to achieve a higher electoral college margin than Reagan did. He was a moderate Appalachian Republican who would certainly have been able to do as well or better than Reagan in the Northeast and the lower Midwest – perhaps winning Maryland. The question is how would the West have voted unless Baker chose a running mate from that region to balance the ticket??

If Baker – like Carter – chose another “Easterner” as vice-Presidential nominee, then we might have seen higher third-party votes in the West? Or would Anderson have not run and Carter gained a much better vote in the region without Reagan’s appeal?

"The West" was solidly Republican at that point. If it went pretty heavily for a center right guy from Michigan in 1976, it would go heavily for a Appalachian Republican, whether a westerner is on the ticket or not. I agree though that Baker has potential to outdo Reagan electorally and would certainly do so in the popular vote (I doubt Anderson would run in that case. I do also think that if he played his cards 100% right (and then some) Bush could also outdo Reagan electorally. No one else that ran that year could've outdone Reagan electorally though

Pretty sure even Goldwater could have beaten out Carter that year. So no, Carter wasn’t going to be re-elected in our timeline’s 1980 lol