1980 United States presidential election

Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter 489 electoral votes to 49 and 51 percent to 41 in the popular vote, with John Anderson's independent run drawing under 7 percent. In the same election Republicans won control of the Senate for the first time in 28 years. The voters who moved are why it belongs here. Reagan made inroads among working-class Democrats and union families and did well across the South, which had been Carter's base. Added to the earlier drift of the South, those voters gave Republicans a conservative coalition that framed the rest of the century's politics, popularly called the Reagan Revolution. Read it with 1964 and 1968 to see one long realignment finish.