and Our Times. Vol. 2. Toronto: McClelland &
Stewart, 1997. Detailed study of the political ca-
reer of Pierre Trudeau, including his involve-
ment in the 1980 election.
Granatstein, J. L.Yankee Go Home? Canadians and
Anti-Americanism. Toronto: HarperCollins Canada,
- A history of Canadian anti-Americanism,
with a detailed examination of the 1988 free trade
election.
Lee, Robert Mason.One Hundred Monkeys: The Tri-
umph of Popular Wisdom in Canadian Politics.To-
ronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1990. Journalis-
tic account of the 1988 free trade election.
Sawatsky, John.Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition.To-
ronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992. Biography of
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, including his
1984 and 1988 election victories.
Simpson, Jeffrey.Anxious Years: Politics in the Age of
Mulroney and Chrétien. Toronto: Key Porter Books, - A look by a Canadian journalist at Canadian
politics in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
___.Discipline of Power. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1976. Award-winning study of the
short-lived government of Joe Clark and of Pierre
Trudeau’s return to power in the 1980 election.
Thompson, John Herd, and Stephen J. Randall.
Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.
A history of U.S.-Canadian relations, including
the 1988 free trade election.
Steve Hewitt
See also Business and the economy in Canada;
Canada and the British Commonwealth; Canada
and the United States; Canada-United States Free
Trade Agreement; Foreign policy of Canada; Infla-
tion in Canada; Mulroney, Brian; National Energy
Program (NEP); Quebec referendum of 1980; Rea-
gan, Ronald; Trudeau, Pierre; Turner, John.
Elections in the United States,
midterm
The Event Congressional elections
Date 1982 and 1986
The 1982 and 1986 midterm elections showed the Demo-
cratic Party could maintain its hold on Congress and
slowed the Republican surge in the South.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan had defeated incumbent
president Jimmy Carter to become president of the
United States. His landslide victory had in part been
a result of so-called Reagan Democrats, traditionally
left-leaning moderate voters who abandoned their
normal party of choice to elect a conservative Re-
publican. The election therefore signaled a signifi-
cant shift in the balance of political power in the
country. Nevertheless, the Democrats were able nar-
rowly to maintain control of the House of Represen-
tatives, where the party had been in the majority
since 1954. The 1980 election did end Democratic
control of the Senate, and control of Congress there-
fore became split between the two parties.1982 Midterms By 1982, as interest rates and unem-
ployment rose and President Reagan’s popularity
fell, Republican hopes of retaking the House of Rep-
resentatives dimmed. The Democrats, led by House
Speaker Tip O’Neill, ran a campaign that poked fun
at the House Republicans’ strong support of an un-
popular president, calling them “Reagan’s robots.”
The name stuck, particularly in areas of high unem-
ployment, as Reagan’s economic policies sought to
wring inflation from the economy at the cost of mil-
lions of manufacturing jobs. Particularly vulnerable
were the House’s freshman Republicans elected in- Many were elected as a reaction to the failure
of Democrat Jimmy Carter’s administration, but as
the economy worsened, Republicans were blamed
for the poor economy as well.
As a result, the Republicans lost twenty-six House
seats, thirteen of which had belonged to first-term
Republicans. The party’s distress was felt in eastern
and midwestern industrial states, with heavy Repub-
lican losses in Pennsylvania and more Republican
defeats in Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio, all of which
suffered from high unemployment and declines in
the auto and steel industries. Michigan’s unemploy-
ment rates were the highest in the country, and the
Republican governor of Michigan was defeated in
the election, as were the Republican governors of
Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Illinois saw two in-
cumbents barely hold onto their seats: Two-term Re-
publican governor James Thompson survived by a
few thousand votes, while House Minority Leader
Robert Michel was reelected by an even closer mar-
gin. Michel’s district included the Caterpillar Cor-
poration, which teetered on bankruptcy, and he saw
his usually Republican constituents flock to an un-
320 Elections in the United States, midterm The Eighties in America