1984 United States presidential election in West Virginia

rdf:langString 1984 United States presidential election in West Virginia

rdf:langString Ronald Reagan

rdf:langString George H. W. Bush

rdf:langString Republican Party

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rdf:langString West Virginia

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rdf:langString Ronald Reagan presidential portrait .jpg

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rdf:langString County Results Reagan Mondale

rdf:langString West Virginia Presidential Election Results 1984.svg

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rdf:langString Democratic Party

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rdf:langString The 1984 United States presidential election in West Virginia took place on November 6, 1984. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1984 United States presidential election. West Virginia voters chose 6 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president of the United States. West Virginia was won by incumbent United States President Ronald Reagan of California, who was running against former Vice President Walter Mondale of Minnesota. Reagan ran for a second time with incumbent Vice President and former C.I.A. Director George H. W. Bush of Texas, and Mondale ran with Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York, the first major female candidate for the vice presidency. The presidential election of 1984 was a very partisan election for West Virginia, with over 99% of the electorate voting for either the Democratic or Republican parties, and only five parties appearing on the ballot. Most counties turned out for Reagan except for a bloc of heavily unionized, coal-dependent counties in the southern part of the state bordering Virginia and Kentucky. West Virginia weighed in for this election as 4% more Democratic than the national average. Reagan won the election in West Virginia by a decisive 10.6% margin. While a comfortable victory, this made West Virginia 7.6% more Democratic than the nation at large, as well as Walter Mondale's ninth-best state. West Virginia had been typically Democratic since the New Deal realignment and would remain so up until the turn of the century, when George W. Bush carried the state in 2000 by over six points despite narrowly losing the national popular vote. From 1932 through 1996, West Virginia voted Republican only in the national Republican landslides of 1956, 1972, and 1984; of the three, West Virginia weighed in as more Republican than the nation only in 1972. West Virginia would return to form as a typically Democratic state in 1988, when it was one of only ten states to support Michael Dukakis. Mondale's greatest strength came from heavily unionized southern West Virginia, where he broke 60% in McDowell, Logan, Mingo, Boone, and Fayette Counties; he also carried a number of counties in central West Virginia and two in the Northern Panhandle. Reagan comfortably carried Kanawha County, the state's biggest county and one that was less typically Democratic at the time than some others in the state (having voted to re-elect Carter by only 0.3%), and also carried the state's other then-typically Democratic population centers, Harrison County (Clarksburg), Raleigh County (Beckley), and Monongalia County (Morgantown), by margins ranging from narrow to substantial. He won the swing population center of Cabell County (Huntington) by about the same as his national margin, and got over 2/3 of the vote in the state's largest typically Republican county, Wood County (Parkersburg). Reagan's best county was the unionist and ancestrally Republican Grant County, which no Democrat has won and which gave Reagan over 80% of its ballots. His strongest performances, in general, were in the northeast of the state, where, along with strong support from Grant and likewise unionist and ancestrally Republican Morgan County, he also did well in Hampshire and Hardy Counties, which had begun to transition from typically Democratic to typically Republican in 1968; and along the middle portion of West Virginia's river border with Ohio. Both were typically Republican-leaning regions within what was otherwise an overall Democratic state at the time.

rdf:langString 1984 United States presidential election in West Virginia