By Bob Benenson, CQ Politics Editor

When it comes to electing the president, the modern campaign era has its roots 95 years ago when North Dakota held the first presidential primary. CQ Politics looks back and charts for you, election by election, how this process grew over the last century into the long and sprawling campaigns that have become part of the political landscape. This third in a series covers 1976-84.

1976: The election of 1976 was shadowed by President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, which resulted from revelations that his political allies were involved in the Watergate break-in and that Nixon had personally ordered a coverup of those connections. The 1976 election also produced landmarks in the presidential nominating process.

On the Democratic side, the successful effort of former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter to use Iowa as a springboard from national obscurity produced the enshrinement of that state’s “first in the nation” caucuses as important bellwethers. Although Carter took a modest 28 percent in the Jan. 19 caucuses — 9 points behind “uncommitted” — he ran well ahead of the rest of the Democratic field. He followed this with a 6-point win in the New Hampshire primary Feb. 24 that gave him an edge over Arizona Rep. Morris K. Udall on the left, and a 4-point March 9 win over Wallace in Florida that established him as the predominant Southern candidate. California Gov. Jerry Brown made a late entry in hopes of catching on as an alternative candidate and won primaries in Maryland on May 18, Nevada on May 25 and California on June 8, but it was too little and too late.

On the Republican side, President Gerald R. Ford — who moved up from vice president with Nixon’s resignation — became the first incumbent to have to fight for his nomination over the course of his own party’s primaries. Ronald Reagan, who had become a leader of the conservative movement during his two terms as California governor, ran a fierce challenge that fell just short.

This was signaled in New Hampshire on Feb. 24, when Ford hung on for just a 1-point victory. Ford appeared to take command with a 6-point win in Florida’s primary March 9, and a 19-point win the next week in Illinois, Reagan’s birth state. But Reagan won by more than 7 points in the North Carolina primary March 23, turning the campaign into a pitched battle in which the candidates alternated victories. The campaign culminated on the final primary day of June 8: Reagan dominated in his delegate-rich home state of California, but Ford ran unopposed in New Jersey and won a crucial 10-point victory in Ohio.

With the Republican Party still deeply damaged by Nixon’s downfall, Carter started out the general election campaign as a strong favorite. But some campaign stumbles and an overall conservative trend in the electorate that was then starting to take root made the election close, with Carter pulling out just a 2-point win over Ford.

1980: This year’s nominating campaign was the one that firmly established the dominance of primaries as the major means of allocating delegates among the candidates. A total of 35 states held primaries in 1980, up from 26 in 1976 and 20 in 1972. The campaign also presented an early signal of the “front-loading” of the primary calendar, as several states — seeking to grab some of the attention absorbed by Iowa and New Hampshire — moved their contests to the early part of the process. From five contests held in March 1976, there were nine in March 1980, as well as two more on April 1.

Once again, the incumbent president found himself under pressure in the primaries. Democrat Carter faced a series of difficulties in his term in the White House, which included energy shortages, runaway inflation and interest rates that hindered economic growth, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and, most damaging of all, a November 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by young radicals supported by Iran’s nascent Islamic regime, in which 52 Americans were held hostage for more than a year. Carter's hold on the Democratic nomination appeared threatened by the challenge waged by Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy , the brother of the late president and New York senator.

But Kennedy got off to a stumbling start — starting with an interview conducted by CBS newsman Roger Mudd in which Kennedy was unable to articulate why he was running for president — and was burdened by a revived discussion of his 1969 auto accident in the Massachusetts town of Chappaquiddick in which a young woman passenger died. Carter, also aided by his control as president of the Democratic Party machinery, gained the advantage from the very start, trouncing Kennedy 59 percent to 31 percent in the Iowa caucuses Jan. 21 and 47 percent to 37 percent on Feb. 26 in New Hampshire — which was a must-win state for New Englander Kennedy.

Kennedy would keep his campaign alive by scoring victories in several northeastern states, including New York on March 25, along with winning in California on June 3. But Carter racked up more than the number of delegates he needed. Kennedy and his allies, arguing that renominating Carter would doom the Democrats to defeat, staged an unsuccessful effort at that year’s convention to free the delegates from the candidate commitments they had made during the primaries and caucuses.

On the Republican side, Ronald Reagan entered the contest as the front-runner and ended up easily clinching the nomination, though he had to overcome a stumbling start exacerbated by concerns about his age — at 69, he was seeking to become the oldest president at the time of his election — and his tough Cold War rhetoric, which some feared would escalate tensions with the Soviet Union.

The campaign began with an upset in the Iowa caucuses. George Bush — a former congressman, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., chief U.S. envoy to China and Republican National Committee chairman — ran as a more centrist and establishment alternative to conservative movement leader Reagan and scored a narrow 32 percent to 30 percent victory. Yet Bush’s claim of momentum, or the “Big Mo,” would be short-lived.

The New Hampshire primary provided what would be a signature moment in Reagan’s political career. Reagan agreed to a debate sought by Bush, and his campaign footed the bill to stage the event. But Bush, who expected a one-on-one shot in the debate, was stunned when Reagan entered the room accompanied by four of the Republicans’ long-shot contenders. When debate organizers, confused as to how to proceed, cut off Reagan’s microphone, Reagan declared, “I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green.” Though he had mispronounced the name of Jon Breen, the editor of the Nashua Telegraph newspaper, the aura of toughness that he presented, and the veneer of fairness in opening the debate to all contenders, stuck in the minds of many voters.

Reagan’s dominating win by 50 percent to 23 percent over Bush did not seal the deal for him. On March 4, he finished third behind Bush and liberal Illinois Republican Rep. John B. Anderson in Massachusetts and edged Anderson in Vermont by a razor-thin margin. But he won a crucial victory on March 8 in South Carolina, which that year established itself as the “gateway” Republican primary in the South. Reagan’s 55 percent to 30 percent win over John Connally snuffed out the hopes that the former Treasury secretary and ex-Democratic governor of Texas had held for the GOP nomination.

Even after Reagan began to dominate the primary campaign, Bush hung in longer that the other contenders and scored victories in Connecticut (the Texan’s former home state) on March 25, Pennsylvania on April 22 and Michigan on May 20. His persistence angered some Reagan supporters. But after a brief flirtation at the Republican convention with inviting former President Ford to join his ticket as the vice presidential nominee, Reagan picked Bush.

The two went on that November to their first of two victories. Persistent qualms about Reagan enabled the embattled Carter to hang in through most of the race, and an independent bid by Anderson threatened to pull away the votes of some moderate to liberal Republicans. But Reagan took command at the end of the campaign and defeated Carter by 51 percent to 41 percent.

1984: Reagan weathered a March 1981 assassination attempt by a crazed gunman and a deep recession in the first two years of his term. But by the time of his re-election campaign, the economy was recovering and most voters appeared satisfied with Reagan’s mix of diplomacy and tough talk in dealing with the Soviets. He was unopposed for the 1984 Republican nomination.

All the primary and caucus action therefore was on the Democratic side. The campaign produced a tough fight at the top, in which front-runner Walter F. Mondale — Carter’s vice president and a former senator from Minnesota — had to battle to stave off the upstart campaign of Colorado Sen. Gary Hart. The Democratic contest also was notable for the emergence of veteran civil rights activist Jesse Jackson as the first African-American to seriously compete for a major party’s nomination.

Mondale became the latest front-runner victim of the expectations game in the Iowa caucuses Feb. 20. Though he won by a 32-point margin over runner-up Hart — who began the campaign as a longshot — his 49 percent plurality in the crowded field was widely portrayed as subpar. Hart, McGovern’s campaign manager in 1972, gained media attention as he portrayed himself as a candidate of new ideas and Mondale as representative of a tired liberal party establishment. Riding the momentum, Hart defeated Mondale by 37 percent to 30 percent in the New Hampshire primary Feb. 28 and established himself as a serious contender.

Mondale soon unleashed the most memorable quote of the nominating campaign. “When I hear your new ideas, I’m reminded of that ad, ‘Where’s the beef?’” Mondale chided Hart in a March 11 debate. The zinger referred to a then-popular TV ad for Wendy’s in which elderly actress Clara Peller playing a crabby customer used that phrase to loudly complain about the alleged lack of meat served by the hamburger chain’s competitors. Yet Mondale had trouble putting Hart away. In primaries held two days after that debate, Mondale won in Alabama and Georgia while Hart finished first in Florida, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The two staged a battle over more than three months, culminating on June 5: Though Hart won California by about 4 points, Mondale’s wins in New Jersey and West Virginia were enough to keep him ahead going into the convention, where added support from party officials enabled him to take the nomination.

Jackson, meanwhile, made his mark by winning primaries in the District of Columbia on May 1 and Louisiana on May 5, and by taking 20 percent of the vote or more in states with large black populations, including Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina in the South and Illinois, New York, Maryland and New Jersey in the urban North.

The prolonged nominating campaign cost Mondale financial resources, and Reagan later exploited the often dour and uncharismatic image that Mondale presented in the primaries. But Mondale would have faced difficult odds in any case against Reagan, who was at the height of his popularity and had the benefit of a greatly improved mood among the nation’s voters: Running on the theme that it was “morning” again in America, Reagan swept to a 49-state electoral landslide and defeated Mondale in the popular vote by 18 points — despite Mondale’s effort to shake up the race by picking New York Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro as his vice presidential candidate, making her the first and still the only woman to run on a major party’s national ticket.

• Part One: 1912-64

• Part Two: 1968-72

• Part Four: 1988

• Part Five: 1992

• Part Six: 1996

• Part Seven: 2000

• Part Eight: 2004