1972 United States presidential election

For related races, see 1972 United States elections.

1972 United States presidential election

November 7, 1972
All 538 electoral votes of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	55.2% 5.7 pp
x200px x200px Nominee Richard Nixon George McGovern Party Republican Democratic Home state California South Dakota Running mate Spiro Agnew Sargent Shriver (replaced Thomas Eagleton) Electoral vote 520 17 States carried 49 1 + DC Popular vote 47,168,710 29,173,222 Percentage 60.7% 37.5%
Template:1972 United States presidential election imagemap Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Nixon/Agnew, blue denotes the one state and the one district won by McGovern/Shriver, gold is the electoral vote for Hospers/Nathan by a Virginia faithless elector. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election Richard Nixon Republican Elected President Richard Nixon Republican

The 1972 United States presidential election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon from California defeated Democratic U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Until 1984, this was the largest margin of victory in the Electoral College in a U.S. presidential election.

Nixon easily swept aside challenges from two Republican congressmen in the 1972 Republican primaries to win re-nomination. McGovern, who had played a significant role in reforming the Democratic nomination system after the 1968 election, mobilized the anti-war movement and other liberal supporters to win his party's nomination. Among the candidates he defeated were early front-runner Edmund Muskie, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey, and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American to run for a major party's presidential nomination.

Nixon emphasized the strong economy and his success in foreign affairs, while McGovern ran on a platform calling for an immediate end to the Vietnam War, and the institution of a guaranteed minimum income. Nixon maintained a large and consistent lead in polling. Separately, Nixon's reelection committee broke into the Watergate complex to wiretap the Democratic National Committee's headquarters, a scandal that would later be known as "Watergate". McGovern's campaign was further damaged by the revelation that his running mate, Thomas Eagleton, had undergone psychiatric electroshock therapy as a treatment for depression. Eagleton was replaced on the ballot by Sargent Shriver.

Nixon won the election in a landslide, taking 60.7% of the popular vote and carrying 49 states, and he was the first Republican to sweep the South. McGovern took just 37.5% of the popular vote, while John G. Schmitz of the American Independent Party won 1.4% of the vote. Nixon received almost 18 million more votes than McGovern, and he holds the record for the widest popular vote margin in any United States presidential election. The 1972 presidential election was the first since the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. Within two years of the election, both Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned from office: the former in August 1974, due to Watergate, the latter in October 1973, due to a separate corruption charge. Gerald Ford first succeeded Agnew, then the following year, as Vice-President, succeeded Nixon.

Democratic nomination

Main article: Democratic Party presidential primaries, 1972

Overall, fifteen people declared their candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination. They were:

• George McGovern, Senator from South Dakota
• Hubert Humphrey, Senator from Minnesota and former Vice President, presidential nominee in 1968
• George Wallace, Governor of Alabama
• Edmund Muskie, Senator from Maine, vice presidential nominee in 1968
• Eugene J. McCarthy, former Senator from Minnesota
• Henry M. Jackson, Senator from Washington
• Shirley Chisholm, Representative of New York's 12th congressional district
• Terry Sanford, former Governor of North Carolina
• John Lindsay, Mayor of New York City, New York
• Wilbur Mills, Representative of Arkansas's 2nd congressional district
• Vance Hartke, Senator from Indiana
• Fred Harris, Senator from Oklahoma
• Sam Yorty, Mayor of Los Angeles, California
• Patsy Mink, Representative of Hawaii's 2nd congressional district
• Walter Fauntroy, Delegate from Washington, D.C.

Democratic Party Ticket, 1972
George McGovern	Sargent Shriver
for President	for Vice President
U.S. Senator from South Dakota (1963–1981)	21st U.S. Ambassador to France (1968–1970)
Campaign
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Primaries

Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy, the youngest brother of late President John F. Kennedy and late United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was the favorite to win the 1972 nomination, but he announced he would not be a candidate. The favorite for the Democratic nomination then became Senator Ed Muskie, the 1968 vice-presidential nominee. Muskie's momentum collapsed just prior to the New Hampshire primary, when the so-called "Canuck letter" was published in the Manchester Union-Leader. The letter, actually a forgery from Nixon's "dirty tricks" unit, claimed that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians – a remark likely to injure Muskie's support among the French-American population in northern New England. Subsequently, the paper published an attack on the character of Muskie's wife Jane, reporting that she drank and used off-color language during the campaign. Muskie made an emotional defense of his wife in a speech outside the newspaper's offices during a snowstorm. Though Muskie later stated that what had appeared to the press as tears were actually melted snowflakes, the press reported that Muskie broke down and cried, shattering the candidate's image as calm and reasoned.

Nearly two years before the election, South Dakota Senator George McGovern entered the race as an anti-war, progressive candidate. McGovern was able to pull together support from the anti-war movement and other grassroots support to win the nomination in a primary system he had played a significant part in designing.

On January 25, 1972, New York Representative Shirley Chisholm announced she would run, and became the first African-American woman to run for the Democratic or Republican presidential nomination. Hawaii Representative Patsy Mink also announced she would run, and became the first Asian American to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

On April 25, George McGovern won the Massachusetts primary. Two days later, journalist Robert Novak quoted a "Democratic senator" later revealed to be Thomas Eagleton as saying: "The people don't know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion, and legalization of pot. Once middle America – Catholic middle America, in particular – finds this out, he's dead." The label stuck and McGovern became known as the candidate of "amnesty, abortion, and acid". It became Humphrey's battle cry to stop McGovern—especially in the Nebraska primary.

Alabama Governor George Wallace, an anti-integrationist, did well in the South (winning nearly every county in the Florida primary) and among alienated and dissatisfied voters in the North. What might have become a forceful campaign was cut short when Wallace was shot in an assassination attempt by Arthur Bremer on May 15. Wallace was struck by five bullets and left paralyzed from the waist down. The day after the assassination attempt, Wallace won the Michigan and Maryland primaries, but the shooting effectively ended his campaign and he pulled out in July.

In the end, McGovern won the nomination by winning primaries through grassroots support in spite of establishment opposition. McGovern had led a commission to re-design the Democratic nomination system after the divisive nomination struggle and convention of 1968. The fundamental principle of the McGovern Commission—that the Democratic primaries should determine the winner of the Democratic nomination—have lasted throughout every subsequent nomination contest. However, the new rules angered many prominent Democrats whose influence was marginalized and those politicians refused to support McGovern's campaign (some even supporting Nixon instead), leaving the McGovern campaign at a significant disadvantage in funding compared to Nixon.

Primary results

Statewide contest by winner

Primaries popular vote results:

• Hubert Humphrey – 4,121,372 (25.77%)
• George McGovern – 4,053,451 (25.34%)
• George Wallace – 3,755,424 (23.48%)
• Edmund Muskie – 1,840,217 (11.51%)
• Eugene McCarthy – 553,990 (3.46%)
• Henry M. Jackson – 505,198 (3.16%)
• Shirley Chisholm – 430,703 (2.69%)
• Terry Sanford – 331,415 (2.07%)
• John Lindsay – 196,406 (1.23%)
• Samuel Yorty – 79,446 (0.50%)
• Wilbur Mills – 37,401 (0.23%)
• Walter E. Fauntroy – 21,217 (0.13%)
• Unpledged – 19,533 (0.12%)
• Ted Kennedy – 16,693 (0.10%)
• Vance Hartke – 11,798 (0.07%)
• Patsy Mink – 8,286 (0.05%)
• None – 6,269 (0.04%)

Notable endorsements

Edmund Muskie

• Former Governor of and Secretary of Commerce W. Averell Harriman from New York
• Senator Harold Hughes from Iowa
• Senator Birch Bayh from Indiana
• Senator Adlai Stevenson III from Illinois
• Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska
• Former Senator Stephen M. Young from Ohio
• Governor Milton Shapp of Pennsylvania
• Former Governor Michael DiSalle of Ohio
• Ohio State Treasurer Gertrude W. Donahey
• Astronaut John Glenn from Ohio

Hubert Humphrey

• Mayor Jack Sensenbrenner of Columbus, Ohio

George McGovern

• Senator Frank Church from Idaho
• Senator John V. Tunney from California

George Wallace

• Former Governor Lester Maddox of Georgia

Shirley Chisholm

• Representative Ron Dellums from California
• Feminist leader and author Betty Friedan
• Reverend Jesse Jackson from Illinois
• Feminist leader, journalist, and DNC official Gloria Steinem

Terry Sanford

• Former President Lyndon B. Johnson from Texas

Henry M. Jackson

• Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia

1972 Democratic National Convention

Video from the Florida conventions

Main article: 1972 Democratic National Convention

Results:

• George McGovern – 1864.95
• Henry M. Jackson – 525
• George Wallace – 381.7
• Shirley Chisholm – 151.95
• Terry Sanford – 77.5
• Hubert Humphrey – 66.7
• Wilbur Mills – 33.8
• Edmund Muskie – 24.3
• Ted Kennedy – 12.7
• Sam Yorty – 10
• Wayne Hays – 5
• John Lindsay – 5
• Fred Harris – 2
• Eugene McCarthy – 2
• Walter Mondale – 2
• Ramsey Clark – 1
• Walter Fauntroy – 1
• Vance Hartke – 1
• Harold Hughes – 1
• Patsy Mink – 1

The vice presidential vote

Most polls showed McGovern running well behind incumbent President Richard Nixon, except when McGovern was paired with Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. McGovern and his campaign brain trust lobbied Kennedy heavily to accept the bid to be McGovern's running mate, but he continually refused their advances, and instead suggested U.S. Representative (and House Ways and Means Committee chairman) Wilbur Mills of Arkansas and Boston Mayor Kevin White. Offers were then made to Hubert Humphrey, Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff, and Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, all of whom turned it down. Finally, the vice presidential slot was offered to Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, who accepted the offer.

With hundreds of delegates displeased with McGovern, the vote to ratify Eagleton's candidacy was chaotic, with at least three other candidates having their names put into nomination and votes scattered over 70 candidates. A grassroots attempt to displace Eagleton in favor of Texas state representative Frances Farenthold gained significant traction, though was ultimately unable to change the outcome of the vote.

The vice-presidential balloting went on so long that McGovern and Eagleton were forced to begin making their acceptance speeches at around 2 am, local time.

After the convention ended, it was discovered that Eagleton had undergone psychiatric electroshock therapy for depression and had concealed this information from McGovern. A Time magazine poll taken at the time found that 77 percent of the respondents said, "Eagleton's medical record would not affect their vote." Nonetheless, the press made frequent references to his "shock therapy", and McGovern feared that this would detract from his campaign platform. McGovern subsequently consulted confidentially with preeminent psychiatrists, including Eagleton's own doctors, who advised him that a recurrence of Eagleton's depression was possible and could endanger the country should Eagleton become president. McGovern had initially claimed that he would back Eagleton "1000 percent", only to ask Eagleton to withdraw three days later. This perceived lack of conviction in sticking with his running mate was disastrous for the McGovern campaign.

McGovern later approached six different prominent Democrats to run for vice-president: Ted Kennedy, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Abraham Ribicoff, Larry O'Brien and Reubin Askew. All six declined. Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law to John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy, former Ambassador to France and former Director of the Peace Corps, later accepted. He was officially nominated by a special session of the Democratic National Committee. By this time, McGovern's poll ratings had plunged from 41 to 24 percent.

Republican nomination

Republican candidates:

• Richard Nixon, President of the United States who formed his Committee for the Re-Election of the President
• Pete McCloskey, Representative from California
• John M. Ashbrook, Representative from Ohio

Republican Party Ticket, 1972
Richard Nixon	Spiro Agnew
for President	for Vice President
200x200px
37th President of the United States (1969–1974)	39th Vice President of the United States (1969–1973)
Campaign
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Primaries

Richard Nixon was a popular incumbent president in 1972, as he was credited with opening the People's Republic of China as a result of his 1972 visit, and achieving détente with the Soviet Union. Polls showed that Nixon held a strong lead in the Republican primaries. He was challenged by two candidates, liberal Pete McCloskey from California and conservative John Ashbrook from Ohio. McCloskey ran as an anti-war candidate, while Ashbrook opposed Nixon's détente policies towards China and the Soviet Union. In the New Hampshire primary McCloskey garnered 19.8% of the vote to Nixon's 67.6%, with Ashbrook receiving 9.7%. Nixon won 1323 of the 1324 delegates to the Republican convention, with McCloskey receiving the vote of one delegate from New Mexico. Vice President Spiro Agnew was re-nominated by acclamation; while both the party's moderate wing and Nixon himself had wanted to replace him with a new running-mate (the moderates favoring Nelson Rockefeller, and Nixon favoring John Connally), it was ultimately concluded that such action would incur too great a risk of losing Agnew's base of conservative supporters.

Primary results

Primaries popular vote result:

• Richard Nixon – 5,378,704 (86.92%)
• Unpledged – 317,048 (5.12%)
• John Ashbrook – 311,543 (5.03%)
• Pete McCloskey – 132,731 (2.15%)

Convention

Seven members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War were brought on federal charges for conspiring to disrupt the Republican convention. They were acquitted by a federal jury in Gainesville, Florida.

Third parties

The only major third party candidate in the 1972 election was conservative Republican Representative John G. Schmitz, who ran on the American Independent Party ticket (the party on whose ballot George Wallace ran in 1968). He was on the ballot in 32 states and received 1,099,482 votes. Unlike Wallace, however, he did not win a majority of votes cast in any state, and received no electoral votes, although he did finish ahead of McGovern in four of the most conservative Idaho counties. Schmitz's performance in archconservative Jefferson County was the best by a third-party Presidential candidate in any free or postbellum state county since 1936 when William Lemke reached over twenty-eight percent of the vote in the North Dakota counties of Burke, Sheridan and Hettinger.

John Hospers and Tonie Nathan of the newly formed Libertarian Party were on the ballot only in Colorado and Washington, but were official write-in candidates in four others, and received 3,674 votes, winning no states. However, they did receive one Electoral College vote from Virginia from a Republican faithless elector (see below). The Libertarian vice-presidential nominee Theodora "Tonie" Nathan became the first Jewish person and the first woman in U.S. history to receive an Electoral College vote.

Linda Jenness was nominated by the Socialist Workers Party, with Andrew Pulley as her running-mate. Benjamin Spock and Julius Hobson were nominated for president and vice-president, respectively, by the People's Party.

General election

Campaign

Richard Nixon during an August 1972 campaign stop

George McGovern speaking at an October 1972 campaign rally

McGovern ran on a platform of immediately ending the Vietnam War and instituting guaranteed minimum incomes for the nation's poor. His campaign was harmed by his views during the primaries (which alienated many powerful Democrats), the perception that his foreign policy was too extreme, and the Eagleton debacle. With McGovern's campaign weakened by these factors, the Republicans successfully portrayed him as a radical left-wing extremist incompetent to serve as president. Nixon led in the polls by large margins throughout the entire campaign. With an enormous fundraising advantage and a comfortable lead in the polls, Nixon concentrated on large rallies and focused speeches to closed, select audiences, leaving much of the retail campaigning to surrogates like Vice President Agnew. Nixon did not, by design, try to extend his coattails to Republican congressional or gubernatorial candidates, preferring to pad his own margin of victory.

Results

Election results by county.

  Richard Nixon

  George McGovern

Results by congressional district.

Nixon's percentage of the popular vote was only marginally less than Lyndon Johnson's record in the 1964 election, and his margin of victory was slightly larger. Nixon won a majority vote in 49 states, including McGovern's home state of South Dakota. Only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia voted for the challenger, resulting in an even more lopsided Electoral College tally. McGovern garnered only 37.5 percent of the national popular vote percentage, the lowest share received by a Democratic Party nominee since John W. Davis won only 28.8 percent of the vote in the 1924 election. The only major party candidate since 1972 to receive less than 40 percent of the vote was Republican incumbent President George H. W. Bush who won only 37.4 percent of the vote in the 1992 election, a race complicated by a strong third party vote.

Although the McGovern campaign believed that its candidate had a better chance of defeating Nixon because of the new Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution that lowered the national voting age to 18 from 21, most of the youth vote went to Nixon. This was the first election in American history in which a Republican candidate carried every single Southern state, continuing the region's transformation from a Democratic bastion into a Republican stronghold as Arkansas was carried by a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in a century. By this time, all the Southern states, except Arkansas and Texas, had been carried by a Republican in either the previous election or the one in 1964 (although Republican candidates carried Texas in 1928, 1952 and 1956). As a result of this election, Massachusetts became the only state that Nixon did not carry in any of the three presidential elections in which he was a candidate. This is one of only two elections since 1856 that Massachusetts and Rhode Island did not support the same candidate. The other election which the two states did not do so is 1980.

This presidential election was the first since 1808 in which New York did not have the largest number of electors in the Electoral College, having fallen to 41 electors vs. California's 45. Additionally, through 2019 it remains the last one in which Minnesota was carried by the Republican candidate. Minnesota was later the only state not won by Ronald Reagan in either 1980 or 1984. It also proved the last occasion that Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Rhode Island and West Virginia would be won by Republicans until 1984. This was the latest election where both candidates have already passed away.

McGovern won a mere 130 counties, plus the District of Columbia and four county-equivalents in Alaska, easily the fewest counties won by any major-party presidential nominee since the advent of popular presidential elections. In nineteen states, McGovern failed to carry a single county; he carried a mere one county-equivalent in a further nine states, and just two counties in a further seven. In contrast to Walter Mondale's narrow 1984 win in Minnesota, McGovern comfortably did win Massachusetts, but lost every other state by no less than five percentage points as well as 45 states by more than ten percentage points – the exceptions being Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and his home state of South Dakota. This election also made Nixon the second former Vice President in American history to serve two terms back-to-back, after Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and 1804. Since McGovern carried only one state, bumper stickers reading "Nixon 49 America 1", "Don't Blame Me I'm From Massachusetts" and "Massachusetts: The One And Only" were popular for a short time in Massachusetts. The "Don't Blame Me I'm From Massachusetts" bumper sticker was subsequently revived after Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election despite losing Massachusetts to Hillary Clinton.

Nixon managed to win 18% of the African American vote (Gerald Ford would get 16% in 1976). He also remains the only Republican in modern times to threaten the oldest extant Democratic stronghold of South Texas: this is the last election when the Republicans have won Hidalgo or Dimmit Counties, the only time Republicans have won La Salle County since William McKinley in 1900, and one of only two occasions since Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 that Republicans have gained a majority in Presidio County. More significantly, the 1972 election is the last time several highly populous urban counties – including Cook in Illinois, Orleans in Louisiana, Hennepin in Minnesota, Cuyahoga in Ohio, Durham in North Carolina, Queens in New York and Prince George's in Maryland – have voted Republican.

Nixon, who became term limited under the provisions of the Twenty-second Amendment as a result of his victory, became the first (and, as of 2020, only) presidential candidate to win a significant number of electoral votes in three presidential elections since ratification of that Amendment. Prior to ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment, three other presidential candidates (Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland and Franklin D. Roosevelt) also polled significant electoral votes in at least three elections (unlike Nixon, Jackson, Cleveland and Roosevelt also won the popular vote at least three times although only Roosevelt was elected President more than twice). Counting Nixon's successful runs for Vice President in the 1950's, he matched FDR's achievements of five elections polling significant electoral votes and four elections won as a presidential and/or vice presidential nominee.

Presidential candidate	Party	Home state	Popular vote		Electoral vote	Running mate
			Count	Pct		Vice-presidential candidate	Home state	Elect. vote
Richard Milhous Nixon (Incumbent)	Republican	California	47,168,710	60.67%	520	Spiro Theodore Agnew	Maryland	520
George Stanley McGovern	Democratic	South Dakota	29,173,222	37.52%	17	Robert Sargent Shriver	Maryland	17
John G. Schmitz	American Independent	California	1,100,868	1.42%	0	Thomas J. Anderson	Tennessee	0
Linda Jenness	Socialist Workers	Georgia	83,380	0.11%	0	Andrew Pulley	Illinois	0
Benjamin Spock	People's	California	78,759	0.10%	0	Julius Hobson	District of Columbia	0
Louis Fisher	Socialist Labor	Illinois	53,814	0.07%	0	Genevieve Gunderson	Minnesota	0
Gus Hall	Communist	New York	25,597	0.03%	0	Jarvis Tyner	Pennsylvania	0
Evelyn Reed	Socialist Workers	New York	13,878	0.02%	0	Clifton DeBerry	Illinois	0
E. Harold Munn	Prohibition	Michigan	13,497	0.02%	0	Marshall Uncapher	Kansas	0
John G. Hospers	Libertarian	California	3,674	0.00%	1	Theodora Nathan	Oregon	1
John Mahalchik	America First	New Jersey	1,743	0.00%	0	Irv Homer	Pennsylvania	0
Other			26,880	0.04%	—	Other		—
Total			77,744,027	100%	538			538
Needed to win					270			270

Source (Popular Vote): Source (Electoral Vote): Source (Close States): Leip, David "How close were U.S. Presidential Elections?", Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved: January 24, 2013.

John Hospers received one faithless electoral vote from Virginia.

Popular vote
Nixon			60.67%
McGovern			37.52%
Schmitz			1.42%
Others			0.4%

Electoral vote
Nixon			96.65%
McGovern			3.16%
Hospers			0.19%

• 

  Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

Results by state

States/districts won by Nixon/Agnew

States/districts won by McGovern/Shriver

		Richard Nixon Republican			George McGovern Democratic			John Schmitz American Independent			John Hospers Libertarian			Margin		State Total
State	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	#
Alabama	9	728,701	72.43	9	256,923	25.54		11,918	1.18					471,778	46.89	1,006,093	AL
Alaska	3	55,349	58.13	3	32,967	34.62		6,903	7.25					22,382	23.51	95,219	AK
Arizona	6	402,812	61.64	6	198,540	30.38		21,208	3.25					204,272	31.26	653,505	AZ
Arkansas	6	445,751	68.82	6	198,899	30.71		3,016	0.47					246,852	38.11	647,666	AR
California	45	4,602,096	55.00	45	3,475,847	41.54		232,554	2.78		980	0.01		1,126,249	13.46	8,367,862	CA
Colorado	7	597,189	62.61	7	329,980	34.59		17,269	1.81		1,111	0.12		267,209	28.01	953,884	CO
Connecticut	8	810,763	58.57	8	555,498	40.13		17,239	1.25					255,265	18.44	1,384,277	CT
Delaware	3	140,357	59.60	3	92,283	39.18		2,638	1.12					48,074	20.41	235,516	DE
D.C.	3	35,226	21.56		127,627	78.10	3							−92,401	−56.54	163,421	DC
Florida	17	1,857,759	71.91	17	718,117	27.80								1,139,642	44.12	2,583,283	FL
Georgia	12	881,496	75.04	12	289,529	24.65		812	0.07					591,967	50.39	1,174,772	GA
Hawaii	4	168,865	62.48	4	101,409	37.52								67,456	24.96	270,274	HI
Idaho	4	199,384	64.24	4	80,826	26.04		28,869	9.30					118,558	38.20	310,379	ID
Illinois	26	2,788,179	59.03	26	1,913,472	40.51		2,471	0.05					874,707	18.52	4,723,236	IL
Indiana	13	1,405,154	66.11	13	708,568	33.34								696,586	32.77	2,125,529	IN
Iowa	8	706,207	57.61	8	496,206	40.48		22,056	1.80					210,001	17.13	1,225,944	IA
Kansas	7	619,812	67.66	7	270,287	29.50		21,808	2.38					349,525	38.15	916,095	KS
Kentucky	9	676,446	63.37	9	371,159	34.77		17,627	1.65					305,287	28.60	1,067,499	KY
Louisiana	10	686,852	65.32	10	298,142	28.35		52,099	4.95					388,710	36.97	1,051,491	LA
Maine	4	256,458	61.46	4	160,584	38.48		117	0.03		1	0.00		95,874	22.98	417,271	ME
Maryland	10	829,305	61.26	10	505,781	37.36		18,726	1.38					323,524	23.90	1,353,812	MD
Massachusetts	14	1,112,078	45.23		1,332,540	54.20	14	2,877	0.12		43	0.00		−220,462	−8.97	2,458,756	MA
Michigan	21	1,961,721	56.20	21	1,459,435	41.81		63,321	1.81					502,286	14.39	3,490,325	MI
Minnesota	10	898,269	51.58	10	802,346	46.07		31,407	1.80					95,923	5.51	1,741,652	MN
Mississippi	7	505,125	78.20	7	126,782	19.63		11,598	1.80					378,343	58.57	645,963	MS
Missouri	12	1,154,058	62.29	12	698,531	37.71								455,527	24.59	1,852,589	MO
Montana	4	183,976	57.93	4	120,197	37.85		13,430	4.23					63,779	20.08	317,603	MT
Nebraska	5	406,298	70.50	5	169,991	29.50								236,307	41.00	576,289	NE
Nevada	3	115,750	63.68	3	66,016	36.32								49,734	27.36	181,766	NV
New Hampshire	4	213,724	63.98	4	116,435	34.86		3,386	1.01					97,289	29.12	334,055	NH
New Jersey	17	1,845,502	61.57	17	1,102,211	36.77		34,378	1.15					743,291	24.80	2,997,229	NJ
New Mexico	4	235,606	61.05	4	141,084	36.56		8,767	2.27					94,522	24.49	385,931	NM
New York	41	4,192,778	58.54	41	2,951,084	41.21								1,241,694	17.34	7,161,830	NY
North Carolina	13	1,054,889	69.46	13	438,705	28.89		25,018	1.65					616,184	40.58	1,518,612	NC
North Dakota	3	174,109	62.07	3	100,384	35.79		5,646	2.01					73,725	26.28	280,514	ND
Ohio	25	2,441,827	59.63	25	1,558,889	38.07		80,067	1.96					882,938	21.56	4,094,787	OH
Oklahoma	8	759,025	73.70	8	247,147	24.00		23,728	2.30					511,878	49.70	1,029,900	OK
Oregon	6	486,686	52.45	6	392,760	42.33		46,211	4.98					93,926	10.12	927,946	OR
Pennsylvania	27	2,714,521	59.11	27	1,796,951	39.13		70,593	1.54					917,570	19.98	4,592,105	PA
Rhode Island	4	220,383	53.00	4	194,645	46.81		25	0.01		2	0.00		25,738	6.19	415,808	RI
South Carolina	8	478,427	70.58	8	189,270	27.92		10,166	1.50					289,157	42.66	677,880	SC
South Dakota	4	166,476	54.15	4	139,945	45.52								26,531	8.63	307,415	SD
Tennessee	10	813,147	67.70	10	357,293	29.75		30,373	2.53					455,854	37.95	1,201,182	TN
Texas	26	2,298,896	66.20	26	1,154,291	33.24		7,098	0.20					1,144,605	32.96	3,472,714	TX
Utah	4	323,643	67.64	4	126,284	26.39		28,549	5.97					197,359	41.25	478,476	UT
Vermont	3	117,149	62.66	3	68,174	36.47								48,975	26.20	186,947	VT
Virginia	12	988,493	67.84	11	438,887	30.12		19,721	1.35				1	549,606	37.72	1,457,019	VA
Washington	9	837,135	56.92	9	568,334	38.64		58,906	4.00		1,537	0.10		268,801	18.28	1,470,847	WA
West Virginia	6	484,964	63.61	6	277,435	36.39								207,529	27.22	762,399	WV
Wisconsin	11	989,430	53.40	11	810,174	43.72		47,525	2.56					179,256	9.67	1,852,890	WI
Wyoming	3	100,464	69.01	3	44,358	30.47		748	0.51					56,106	38.54	145,570	WY
TOTALS:	538	47,168,710	60.67	520	29,173,222	37.52	17	1,100,868	1.42	0	3,674	0.00	1	17,995,488	23.15	77,744,027	US

Close states

States where margin of victory was more than 5 percentage points, but less than 10 percentage points (43 electoral votes):

1. Minnesota, 5.51%
2. Rhode Island, 6.19%
3. South Dakota, 8.63%
4. Massachusetts, 8.97%
5. Wisconsin, 9.67%

Voter demographics

Nixon won 36 percent of the Democratic vote, according to an exit poll conducted for CBS News by George Fine Research, Inc.. This represents more than twice the percent of voters who typically defected from their party in presidential elections. Specifically, in the previous five elections, the estimated defection rate among Democratic voters (i.e. the percentage who voted for the Republican presidential candidate) was 16 percent. Nixon also became the first Republican presidential candidate in American history to win the Roman Catholic vote (53-46), and the first in recent history to win the blue-collar vote, which he won by a 5-to-4 margin. McGovern narrowly won the union vote 50-48, though this difference was within the survey's margin of error of 2 percentage points. McGovern also narrowly won the youth vote (i.e. those aged 18 to 24) 52-46, a narrower margin than many of his strategists had predicted. Early on, the McGovern campaign also significantly overestimated the number of young people who would vote in the election: they predicted that 18 million would have voted in total, but exit polls indicate that the actual number was about 12 million. McGovern did win comfortably among both blacks and Jews, but by somewhat smaller margins than usual for a Democratic candidate.

Post-election investigations into the Watergate break-in

Main article: Watergate scandal

On June 17, 1972, five months before election day, five men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel in Washington, D.C.; the resulting investigation led to the revelation of attempted cover-ups of the break-in within the Nixon administration. What became known as the Watergate scandal eroded President Nixon's public and political support in his second term, and he resigned on August 9, 1974, in the face of probable impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal from office by the Senate.

As part of the continuing Watergate investigation in 1974–75, federal prosecutors offered companies that had given illegal campaign contributions to President Nixon's re-election campaign lenient sentences if they came forward. Many companies complied, including Northrop Grumman, 3M, American Airlines and Braniff Airlines. By 1976, prosecutors had convicted 18 American corporations of contributing illegally to Nixon's campaign.

See also

• 1972 United States House of Representatives elections
• 1972 United States Senate elections
• 1972 United States gubernatorial elections
• George McGovern 1972 presidential campaign
• Second inauguration of Richard Nixon
• Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, a collection of articles by Hunter S. Thompson on the subject of the election, focusing on the McGovern campaign.

External links

• United States presidential election of 1972 at Encyclopædia Britannica
• The Election Wall's 1972 Election Video Page
• 1972 popular vote by counties
• 1972 popular vote by states
• 1972 popular vote by states (with bar graphs)
• How close was the 1972 election? at the Wayback Machine (archived August 25, 2012) — Michael Sheppard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Campaign commercials from the 1972 election
• C-SPAN segment on 1972 campaign commercials
• C-SPAN segment on the “Eagleton Affair”
• Election of 1972 in Counting the Votes