Archive, 1984: Ronald Reagan poised to win US election

Mr Mondale said yesterday that he would rather “lose a campaign about decency than win one about self-interest” in comments which contrasted sharply which the message which President Reagan was seeking to put across while on the stump in Pennsylvania.

Round one goes to Mondale but Reagan refuses to fall

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At a rally at Millersville University, in Pennsylvania, the president urged voters not to allow the Democrats “to pick the American wallet again.” He said that Mr Mondale would return the US to the days of “torpor, timidity and taxes.”

In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Mr Mondale put on display the kind of caring qualities which have made him a favourite among the leader writers of several of America’s big east coast newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer, which endorsed his candidacy yesterday. Mr Mondale said that his campaign was “betting that the American people are more compassionate and caring than he (Reagan) thinks.”

With the Reagan-Bush ticket widening its lead in several new opinion polls released yesterday, Mr Mondale questioned whether President Reagan was as popular as the polls show. “When I see the energy in these crowds, the enthusiasm and the anger… the Reagan crowd is getting pretty cocky. They’d better watch out. The public is not going to be taken for granted.”

The latest national opinion surveys continue to favour President Reagan. Newsweek’s poll showed the president ahead by 17 points: a USA Today poll showed Mr Reagan’s lead at 23 points (down from 25 points a week earlier), and US News and World Report said that its state-by-state survey shows Mr Reagan ahead in 45 out of the 50 states and the president “on his way to a smashing victory on November 6.”

With his bases in the south and west apparently secured, President Reagan campaigned yesterday in the traditional Democratic strongholds of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. He holds only a narrow lead in Pennsylvania, but is well ahead in the traditionally Democratic state of West Virginia where he was seeking to help the Republican Senate candidate, Mr John Raese, fighting an uphill campaign against the sitting governor, Mr Jay Rockerfeller, who is spending more than $10 million of the family fortunes in his battle for a Senate seat.

Mondale quits on bitter-sweet note / Democratic presidential candidate defeated

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Despite the enormous popularity of President Reagan’s rehearsed image, these are not qualities which have much appeal to the leader writers on the generally left-of-centre east coast newspapers. The Washington Post said yesterday that it was supporting Mr Mondale’s election “enthusiastically and without apology” in contrast of its lukewarm endorsement of Mr Carter in 1980.

“We think Mr Mondale – who has been maddeningly misread and mistreated by the political trendmakers this year, just as Mr Reagan has been maddeningly indulged and overpraised – is unambiguously the better candidate,” the leading article maintained. It argued that Mr Reagan’s government “has been grossly indifferent to the requirements of racial equality and the needs of the poor.”