What were Reagan's approval ratings prior to his election?

[Onlooker]

I remember that Reagan was awfully unpopular when he ran against Carter. I was looking on the web to find out what his negatives were back then, but couldn't find them. Anyone have any info on this? I think this would be interesting to know in light of Hillary's high negatives.

[Sadie4629]

1. ???

What do you base your assumption that Reagan was unpopular on? Carter was very unpopular, and (in most people's eyes) everyone looked good compared to him. Carter got blamed for everything--gas lines, "malaise," the hostage crisis, etc. That's why Reagan won by such a large margin.

[Onlooker]

3. When Reagan was governor ...

When Reagan ran against Carter, he was very unpopular among liberals and even moderate Democrats. He was a right-wing governor of California, who was unpopular among unions, students, and environmentalists (as well as probably other traditionally democratic groups). I feel pretty certain that his negative ratings were quite high before he was elected president.

[mrcheerful]

2. I am going by what I remember from back then and to be honest the way I remember

it Reagans numbers were higher then Carters. Remember inflation was sky high due to republican mis handling the counrty under Ford And Nixon. Yet Reagan was able to lay the blame on Carter for the mess, Carter had 4 years to clean up the economic mess left behind by Nixon and Ford. Reagan also blamed the 1974 OPEC gas shortage on Carter too, though that happened 2 years before Carter was elected. The majority of the american people ate that up reguardless of what liberals and citizens of Cali said about Reagan. He was very popular even with a lot of democratic supporters, Remember the Reagan democrats? Carter was seen as a weak flip flopper that couldn't decide what was best for the country, then the Iran Hostage crisis hit and that doomed Carter. Reagan pretty much pulled a WWF move on the country, ran his mouth and bull shitted the voters into voting against their gut feelings. I always remembered Reagan polling higher then the rest of the republican hopefuls and his landslide victory in the primaries against better canidates always baffled me because I seen Reagans lies from the start.

[Sadie4629]

5. Carter brought some of his problems on himself

Carter reinstated draft registration, which was VERY unpopular with a large segment of the population. It was also his idea to boycott the Moscow Olympics, which I think of as the WTF???? Moment. He politicized something that was almost sacred to many people.

[book_worm]

4. The 80 election was very close in the polls until the last weekend

When the Ayatollah made some tape regarding the hostages in Iran which brought that whole thing back to the forefront. Carter's numbers went down ten points overnight. Carter was unpopular, but in many ways he did things which needed to be done, and paid no attention to the political winds. Reagan did begin the election season, not "highly" unpopular but with many people afraid of him. But his performances in the debates, his acting know-how, and grandfatherly persona won a lot of people over. He was an actor afterall.

[Lasher]

6. The first post-election Reagan poll put him at 50% approval

http://www.pollkatz.homestead.com/

It's interesting to see that Clinton's approval ratings tracked Saint Ronnie's pretty closely, until the Lewinsky & Iran-Contra scandals. Clinton weathered the storm but Reagan's approval suffered. Next time someone starts building up Saint Ronnie on account of his popularity, point out that Clinton was actually more popular as the above graphic clearly shows.