1976 Election ("What if"-scenario)

[dazzleman]

I agree with the previous poster who said that he would bet that Carter would have beaten Reagan in 1976, but wouldn't bet much on it.

The 1976 election was the last gasp of the old FDR-New Deal coalition of the "solid south" and northern "progressives."  The northern progressives would not have voted for Reagan, and the south would have gone for Carter in 1976 no matter what.

Reagan may have done better than Ford in the popular vote in some of the strongly Republican western states, but that wouldn't have helped him in the electoral college, since Ford carried all those states anyway.  Perhaps Reagan could have picked up Ohio and Wisconsin, and maybe in a real long shot Texas, but I doubt it.

The country was not ready as a whole for Reagan's conservatism in 1976.  It took 4 years of Carter's mismanagement of domestic and foreign policy to make Reagan acceptable on a broad basis.  And aside from his core of devoted supporters, who were not enough to carry an election, the biggest reason people voted for Reagan in 1980 was that he was not Carter.

[dazzleman]

That is a much more difficult question to answer.  We all know what the political landscape was in 1976 since the events leading up to that election are not at issue in this question.

However, I have no way of knowing how the 1977-80 period would have played out with Reagan rather than Carter as president.  It is hard to say exactly how much of the terrible situation during those three years was due to Carter, or might have been avoided with different policies, and how much of it was uncontrollable.

I tend to think that Carter made the problems then worse, or surely didn't help, but wasn't the primary cause.  I think that anybody in office during that period would have had a very difficult time, and there is a good chance that Reagan would have lost re-election in 1980 had he won in 1976.  However, Reagan might have handled things well enough to win re-election by a narrow margin.  We'll never know.

The bottom line as far as Reagan is concerned is that 1976 was not his time.  The country was not ready for him yet, and a Reagan presidency then would have been very different than what it turned out to be in the 1981-89 period.

[dazzleman]

Actually, the world recession was in the early 1980s.  A nasty double-dip recession began in the US in the beginning of 1980, and the economy didn't begin a path of low inflation growth until late 1982.  The late 1970s saw the events that led up to the world recession, including high inflation and the second oil price shock of the 1970s.  But the main economic problem leading up to the 1980 campaign was sky-high inflation, and unemployment was actually lower than what it had been in 1976.

Would the late 1970s have been better with a president other than Carter?  Undoubtedly, in my opinion, but I don't know if they would have been enough better to allow re-election of the person who presided over that difficult period.  I don't happen to believe that a president controls economic growth, but I do believe that his policies can influence it over the longer term.

As far as economics not being Reagan's strong suit, I would say his economic policies are partially responsible for a long period of low-inflation growth.  Certainly, his economic policies were better than anything his opponents at the time had to offer, and represented a break even from traditional Republican policies.

Another important element of the 1980 campaign was foreign policy, and Carter's perceived weakness in this area influenced many to vote for Reagan.  A Reagan foreign policy during the 1977-80 period might have led to a more secure mood in the country by 1980 and influenced the electoral outcome had Reagan been running for re-election then.

All in all, I think it's impossible to predict with certainly hypothetical events far in the past.  But it you want to be so definite about it, be my guest.  I am trying to be non-partisan.

[dazzleman]

Here's another question.  What if Ford had won in 1976 instead of Carter?  What would have happened in the 1977-80 period, and what have happened in the 1980 election?

I have to believe that Ford would have performed better than Carter did if he had won a full term.  He would have maintained a tougher foreign policy and would probably have controlled inflation somewhat better.  The mood of the country by 1980 would probably have been at least marginally better than it was under Carter.

But I think those would have been difficult years no matter who was in office.  I don't think Ford would have been able to run again in 1980, since he served over half of Nixon's second term.  Also, by 1980, the Republicans would have been in office for 12 years if Ford had won in 1976, making a Democratic victory that year even more likely.

So a Ford victory in 1976 would likely have meant that Reagan would never have been president.  This is why Reagan didn't campaign very hard for Ford, despite his "eleventh commandment" never to speak ill of a fellow Republican (which Reagan violated in his fight with Ford for the nomination).

It is hard to imagine the 1980s with a liberal democratic president.  That probably would have happened if only a relatively few number of voters had switched from Carter to Ford in 1976.  It's amazing the narrow margins by which many major events are decided.