United States Presidential election, 1981 (Jimmy is down!)

The United States presidential election of 1981 was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 1981. The contest was between the Democratic national ticket of incumbent President Walter Mondale of Minnesota and Vice President Storm Thurmond from South Carolina and the Republican national ticket of Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor and former Governor from California with his running mate George H.W. Bush, a former Congressman and CIA Director from Texas. Reagan, aided by the Iran hostage crisis and a worsening economy at home marked by high inflation, won the general election in a landslide and received the highest number of electoral votes ever won by a non-incumbent presidential candidate. Reagan was 69 at the time and became the oldest person to ever assume the Oval Office.

The election had originally been scheduled for November 4, 1981 but was postponed due to the assassination of then incumbent Pressident Jimmy Carter.

Democratic Party
Democratic candidates: The three major Democratic candidates in early 1981 were incumbent President Walter Mondale, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Governor Jerry Brown of California. Brown withdrew on April 2. Mondale and Kennedy faced off in 34 primaries. This was the most tumultuous primary race that an elected incumbent president had encountered since President Taft, during the highly contentious election of 1912.
 * Walter Mondale, President of the United States
 * Ted Kennedy, U.S. senator from Massachusetts
 * Jerry Brown, governor of California
 * Cliff Finch, former governor of Mississippi

After defeating Kennedy in 24 of 34 primaries, Mondale entered the party's convention in New York in August with 60 percent of the delegates pledged to him on the first ballot. Still, Kennedy refused to drop out. At the convention, after a futile last-ditch attempt by Kennedy to alter the rules to free delegates from their first-ballot pledges, Mondale was renominated with 2,129 votes to 1,146 for Kennedy. Vice President Strom Thurmond was also renominated. In his acceptance speech, Mondale applauded Regan's eulogy from the Carter funeral but warned that Reagan's conservatism posed a threat to world peace and progressive social welfare programs from the New Deal to the Great Society.

Republican Party
Republican candidates Former Governor Ronald Reagan of California was the odds-on favorite to win his party's nomination for president after nearly beating incumbent President Gerald Ford just five years earlier. Reagan dominated the primaries, early driving from the field Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker from Tennessee, former governor John Connally of Texas, Senator Robert Dole from Kansas, Representative Phil Crane from Illinois, and Representative John Anderson from Illinois, who dropped out of the race to run as an Independent. George Bush from Texas posed the strongest challenge to Reagan with his victories in the Pennsylvania and Michigan primaries, but it was not enough to turn the tide. Reagan won the nomination on the first round at the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, Michigan, in July, then chose George H. W. Bush, his top rival, as his running mate.
 * Former Governor Ronald Reagan of California
 * Former CIA director and United States Representative George H. W. Bush from Texas
 * Representative John B. Anderson from Illinois
 * Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker from Tennessee
 * Representative Phil Crane from Illinois
 * Former Governor John Connally of Texas
 * Senator Bob Dole from Kansas
 * Former Special Ambassador to Paraguay Ben Fernandez from California
 * Former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota
 * Senator Larry Pressler from South Dakota
 * Senator Lowell Weicker from Connecticut