1984 United States presidential election in Texas

1984 United States presidential election in Texas
Turnout	68.32% (of registered voters) ; 47.55% (of voting age population)
Reagan 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90%	Mondale 50–60% 60–70% 70–80%
President before election; Ronald Reagan; Republican	Elected President ; Ronald Reagan; Republican

The 1984 United States presidential election in Texas took place on November 6, 1984. All fifty states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1984 United States presidential election. Texas voters chose 29 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president of the United States.

Texas 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.

Reagan carried Texas by a landslide margin of 27.5%; his 63.61% vote share made it his thirteenth-best state, and his second-best amongst states of the Old Confederacy, states that had voted for Carter in 1976, and states with at least 10 electoral votes (in each case, after Florida). Reagan performed strongly in the state's population centers; the state's three largest counties--Harris, Dallas, and Tarrant—had all become Republican strongholds in the state by this time (Ford carried all three while losing the state in 1976), and all gave Reagan over 60% of the vote. However, he also won the swing county of Bexar (San Antonio), which had voted for Carter in 1976, by double digits; and he flipped typically Democratic Travis County (Austin), whose last two Republican votes had been in 1972 and 1956, winning it, too, by double digits.

Mondale did retain some strength in some of the rural areas of Texas. Much of this strength was in the Rio Grande Valley. However, Mondale also carried a handful of the rural, largely white and Protestant counties '[lying] away from the Mexican border' that Democrats up to that point typically could not win Texas without.^[2] Mondale carried a handful of counties in East Texas, for example, of which two (Orange and Newton) had voted for George Wallace in 1968. He also retained a handful of ancestrally Democratic counties in West Texas, in or directly south of the Panhandle. In a series of other rural counties which had voted for Carter twice, Mondale kept the margins narrow, such as in Jasper (which had also voted for Wallace), Fannin, and Waller (to name the largest ones). As of the 2024 presidential election, this is the last time that El Paso County voted for a Republican candidate.^[3]

70% of white voters supported Reagan while 30% supported Mondale.^[4]^[5]

^ "Turnout and Voter Registration Figures (1970-current)".
^ Manley II, Walter. "Nation's Fate Rests With 7 States, The Vote of the Electoral College is the Only One That Counts". OrlandoSentinel.com. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
^ Sullivan, Robert David; ‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016
^ Black & Black 1992, p. 295.
^ Black & Black 1992, p. 335.

[1] "Turnout and Voter Registration Figures (1970-current)".

[2] Manley II, Walter. "Nation's Fate Rests With 7 States, The Vote of the Electoral College is the Only One That Counts". OrlandoSentinel.com. Retrieved January 17, 2021.

[3] Sullivan, Robert David; ‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016

[FOOTNOTEBlackBlack1992295-4] Black & Black 1992, p. 295.

[FOOTNOTEBlackBlack1992335-5] Black & Black 1992, p. 335.

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