November 2, 1980
Too Close to Call
Two days before the presidential election, it is still not clear who will win. According to the polls, the situation is “too close to call” to make a prediction.
November 4, 1980
The Surprise of the Election Night
The more reports of ballots cast come in, the more certain projections are getting that Ronald Reagan and the Republicans are winning higher than one had guessed. Especially here in Indiana, a Republican landslide is in the making. By this trend, also the well known Democratic Congressman John Brademas, after having served for 22 years in the House of Representatives, may lose his seat.
November 5, 1980
The Election Result
Although it has been assumed that Ronald Reagan would win, the extent of his victory is surprising. Just at this election, which was prognosticated as a neck and neck race, Reagan’s landslide victory comes unexpected. The new-conservative mood in the country runs deeper than it has been seen on the surface.
With a voting turnout of 52%, the election result is as follows: Ronald Reagan won 42.4 million votes or 51% of the total; Jimmy Carter won 34.2 million votes or 41% of the total. Reagan won in 44 states. This gives him 483 electoral votes, while Carter receives only 49.
The Republicans added 10 more seats to their number in the Senate. With 51:49 seats, they have, for the first time since 1954, again the majority in the Senate. With 245 seats - several seats are still open - the Democrats could hold on to their majority in the House of Representatives.
November 10, 1980
Facing Difficult Tasks
As newly elected President, Ronald Reagan is facing difficult tasks. America has presently an inflation of 12.5% and an unemployment rate of 6.5%. What will Reagan and the incoming Republican Administration undertake to overcome this stagnation?
November 15, 1980
Pictures of Saturn
At the beginning of this week (November 12/13), the spacecraft Voyager 1, from a distance of a billion miles, sent pictures of the planet Saturn back to Earth. With astounding clarity, one could see on the television screen the images, which the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, transmitted, and thereby follow how the spacecraft flew by the ringed planet. A strange world of about 1,000 rings and of Saturn’s moons, especially of the largest moon Titan, was opened to our eyes.
[The two spacecrafts Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in August and September 1977 to explore the planets in the outer solar system. Both sent pictures and data of Jupiter and Saturn back to Earth. Voyager 2 flew by Uranus in January 1986 - see entries below of January 22 and 25, 1986. After passing through our solar system, the two spacecrafts are traveling practically timeless through interstellar space. Each of them carries a gold disc with records of a broad variety of our civilization. This gold disc is said to have a life span of about one billion years. It carries with it the hope that another civilization in space may receive this message of our existence. For more detailed information on the “gold plated copper phonograph record” mounted on the Voyager spacecraft see Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), pp. 287-89.]