Reaganomics In The 1980's

Throughout the 1970s, the title of presidency was tarnished as Republican President Richard Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 due to the Watergate Scandal. Because of his connection to Nixon, Vice President Gerald Ford’s presidency was unpopular as well. Ford’s successor to the Oval Office, Democrat Jimmy Carter, had a rather unsuccessful presidency as he only won one term. While both political parties controlled the presidency during the 1970s, political scholars view this era of presidents as one of the worst decades in U.S. history. By the 1980 election, the people of the United States wanted something new. Republican candidate Ronald Reagan captured the hearts and minds of Americans, easily defeating Carter’s reelection bid in 1980.
Unemployment exceeded to ten percent , this was the lowest it had been in forty years. With Reagan already in office he knew that there must be a change in the early 80s. He knew that if he corrected United States economic problem that he would have the trust of the citizen for the election of 1984. At the end of 1982 the United States was flourishing once again, the economy was promising due to the new economic system of Reaganomics. Incumbent Ronald Reagan believed that the United States become very strong due to Reaganomics. Between the years of 1983-1990 the economy grew because it was parallel population growth. The census of 1984-1990 shows that we’ve had the most growth on the west coast. Having twenty percent more people than we had in the previous census, all but three states had a population growth. The principles of Reaganomics was to lower taxes and increase the spending money towards our military. Now that taxes are lowered the United States no longer provided any social programs. There were pros and cons with this new economic system, the economy was doing substantially well while our social problems worsen. An example of a social problem would be the drug rate. Approximately thirty seven percent of the population over the age twelve had used an illegal drug at least once. The drug rates grew due to the
This number isn't surprising, on average every Presidential election there’s only fifty percent voter turnout. There were 61.1 percent of the voters were white, 55.8 were blacks, and 32.6 were spanish/mixed races. There were 59 percent of these voters were male while 60.8 perecent were females. Ages from eighteen to twenty four only 40.8 percent, voters of the ages twenty five through forty four had 58.4 perecent. The ages of forty five through sixty four had 69.8 percent and 67.7 percent for the ages range of sixty five and older. Reason for the higher female voting percentage was due to Geraldine Ferraro. She influenced so many women to make a stand at this time era. Having The National Organization for Women very pleased knowing that they would have a stand in the election. With all of these factors this raised a big question of who would win the election. The election of 1984 differs from all of the elections in the previous years. Ronald Reagan won the electoral college vote by a landslide, receiving five hundred twenty five electoral vote. Mondale only received thirteen electoral votes, which were from his home state of Minnesota and Washington D.C. Our primary in Pennsylvania was Republican. Reagan won 53.3 percent of Pennsylvania, winning twenty five electoral votes. The population vote however was really close, Reagan having 58.8 percent while Mondale had 40.6 percent.