1984_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky
1984 United States presidential election in Kentucky
Election in Kentucky
The 1984 United States presidential election in Kentucky took place on November 6, 1984. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1984 United States presidential election. Kentucky voters chose nine electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president of the United States.
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Kentucky was won by the Republican ticket of incumbent President Ronald Reagan of California and Vice President George H. W. Bush of Texas by a 20-point margin over Democratic ticket of former Vice President Walter Mondale of Minnesota and his running mate Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York. Ferraro was the first major female candidate for the vice presidency.
The presidential election of 1984 was a very partisan election for Kentucky, with over 99% of the electorate voting either Democratic or Republican, though several other parties did appear on the ballot. Reagan carried 100 of Kentucky's counties; Mondale carried 19, mostly in the Eastern Kentucky Coalfield. One county–Gallatin County–split its two-party vote exactly evenly between the two nominees, with each receiving 1,042 votes.[1]
Reagan became the first Republican to ever carry Carroll County, a highly secessionist[2] rural Bluegrass county that had been the state's only county outside the coalfields to support George McGovern 12 years earlier.[3] Kentucky weighed in for this election as 2 percentage points more Republican than the national average.
Reagan won Kentucky by 20.7%, a landslide margin slightly greater than his national margin, and a dramatic shift with respect to 1980, when Reagan only narrowly carried the state over the Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter by 1.5%. Mondale performed well in the Eastern Kentucky Coalfield, but relatively poorly in other traditionally Democratic areas of the state, such as the Bluegrass, the Jackson Purchase, and the Western Kentucky Coalfield, relative even to previous national landslide losers such as Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, John Davis in 1924, and James Cox in 1920. In the Western Coalfield, Reagan became only the second Republican (after Nixon in 1972) to carry Henderson County since 1928, and to ever carry Hopkins County. In the Bluegrass, Reagan became the second Republican, again after only Nixon in 1972, ever to carry Owen County, Henry County, Trimble County, Harrison County, and Franklin County, and the second since 1928 (after Nixon in 1972) to carry Shelby County, Bourbon County, Nicholas County, and Bath County. Concomitantly, Reagan became only the second Republican, after Nixon in 1972, to get over 60% of the vote in Kentucky, a feat which would be replicated in 2012, 2016, and 2020.