United States presidential election, 1972

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United States presidential election, 1972
7 November 1972
Nominee Richard Nixon George McGovern
Party Republican Democratic
Home state California South Dakota
Running mate Spiro Agnew Sargent Shriver
Electoral vote 520 17
States carried 49 1+DC
Popular vote 47,168,710 29,173,222
Percentage 60.7% 37.5%
United States presidential election, 1972

Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Nixon/Agnew, Blue denotes those won by McGovern/Shriver. Light grey is the electoral vote for John Hospers by a Virginia faithless elector. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
Incumbent President
Richard Nixon
Republican
President-Elect
Richard Nixon
Republican

The United States presidential election of 1972 was waged on the issues of radicalism and the Vietnam War. The Democratic nomination was eventually won by George McGovern, who ran an anti-war crusade against incumbent President Richard M. Nixon, but was handicapped by his outsider status, having to fire his vice presidential candidate. Nixon, proclaiming that peace was at hand in Vietnam because of his policies, ridiculed McGovern as the radical candidate. The election took place on November 7, 1972. Nixon won the election in a landslide, with a 23.2 percentage points margin of victory in the popular vote, the 4th largest such margin in Presidential election history.

Contents

[edit] Nominations

[edit] Democratic Party nomination

Statewide contest by winner
Statewide contest by winner

Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy had been the favorite to win the 1972 nomination, but his hopes were derailed by his role in the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident. He was not a candidate.

The establishment favorite for the Democratic nomination was Ed Muskie, the moderate who acquitted himself well as the 1968 Democratic vice presidential candidate. In the New Hampshire primary, Muskie gave a speech to defend himself and his wife, Jane, against the claims of the Canuck Letter. The press reported that Muskie was crying during the speech, and this likely caused Muskie to do worse than expected in the primary, while McGovern came in a surprisingly-close second. McGovern now had the momentum, which was well orchestrated by his campaign manager, Gary Hart.

Alabama governor George Wallace, with his "outsider" image, did well in the South (he won every single county in the Florida primary) and in the north among alienated and dissatisfied voters. What might have become a forceful campaign was cut short when Wallace was shot while campaigning, and left paralyzed in an assassination attempt by Arthur Bremer. The day after the assassination attempt Wallace won the Michigan and Maryland primaries, but the shooting, which left him paralyzed, effectively ended his campaign.

In the end, McGovern succeeded in winning the nomination by winning primaries through grass-roots support in spite of establishment opposition. McGovern had led a commission to redesign the Democratic nomination system after the messy and confused 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—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.

Primaries popular vote results[1].

President Richard Nixon won 1,091 (0.01%) write-in votes.

[edit] Notable endorsements

Hubert Humphrey

George McGovern

George Wallace

Edmund Muskie

Shirley Chisholm

Terry Sanford

Henry M. Jackson

[edit] Candidates gallery

Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana

Representative Shirley Chisholm of New York

former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark of Ohio

U.S. delegate Walter E. Fauntroy of District of Columbia

Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma

Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana

Repressentative Wayne Hays of Ohio

Senator and former Governor Harold Hughes of Iowa

Senator and former U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota

Senator and former DNC Chairman Henry M. Jackson of Washington

Mayor John Lindsay of New York City

former Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota

Senator George McGovern of South Dakota

Representative Wilbur Mills of Arkansas

Representative Patsy Mink of Hawaii

Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota

Senator and 1968 vice-presidential nominee Edmund Muskie of Maine

Governor George Wallace of Alabama

Former Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas

[edit] Democratic National Convention

The tally:

[edit] Other potential vice-presidential candidates

[edit] The vice-presidential vote

With hundreds of delegates either actively supporting Nixon or angry at McGovern for one reason or another, the vote was chaotic, with at least three other candidates having their names put into nomination and votes scattered over 70 candidates. The tally:

The vice presidential balloting went on so long that McGovern and Eagleton were forced to make their acceptance speeches at around three in the morning, local time.

A couple of weeks after the convention ended, it was discovered that Eagleton had undergone psychiatric electroshock therapy for depression, and had concealed this information from McGovern. McGovern initially claimed that he would back Eagleton “1000%”, only to ask Eagleton to withdraw 3 days later. This perceived indecisiveness was disastrous for the McGovern campaign.

After a week in which six prominent Democrats publicly refused the VP nomination, Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law to the Kennedys and former ambassador to France and head of the War on Poverty, finally said yes. 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%.

The Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 covers McGovern's campaign to win the Democratic nomination.

[edit] Amnesty, Abortion and Acid

On April 25, 1972, George McGovern won the Massachusetts primary and journalist Bob Novak phoned Democratic politicians around the country, who agreed with his assessment that blue-collar workers voting for McGovern did not understand what he really stood for.[18] On April 27, 1972 Novak reported in a column that an unnamed democratic senator had talked to him about McGovern.[19] "The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot," the Senator said.[19] "Once middle America — Catholic middle America, in particular — finds this out, he’s dead."[19] The label stuck and McGovern became known as the candidate of "amnesty, abortion and acid."[18][20]

Novak was accused of manufacturing the quote.[19] To rebut the criticism, Novak took the senator to lunch after the campaign and asked whether he could identify him as the source.[19] The senator said he would not allow his identity to be revealed.[19] "Oh, he had to run for re-election", said Novak.[18] The McGovernites would kill him if they knew he had said that." Novak added.[18]

On July 15, 2007, Novak disclosed on Meet the Press that the unnamed senator was Thomas Eagleton.[18] Political analyst Bob Shrum says that Eagleton would never have been selected as McGovern's running mate if it had been known at the time that Eagleton was the source of the quote.[18] "Boy, do I wish he would have let you publish his name. Then he never would have been picked as vice president," said Shrum.[18] "Because the two things, the two things that happened to George McGovern—two of the things that happened to him—were the label you put on him, number one, and number two, the Eagleton disaster. We had a messy convention, but he could have, I think in the end, carried eight or 10 states, remained politically viable. And Eagleton was one of the great train wrecks of all time."[18]

[edit] Republican Party nomination

Richard Nixon during the campaign
Richard Nixon during the campaign

[edit] Candidates gallery

Representative John Ashbrook of Ohio

President Richard Nixon of California

[edit] The primaries

Nixon was a popular incumbent president in 1972, as he seemed to have reached détente with China and USSR. He shrugged off the first glimmers of what, after the election, became the massive Watergate scandal.

Polls showed that Nixon had a strong lead. He was challenged by two minor candidates, liberal Pete McCloskey of California and conservative John Ashbrook of Ohio. McCloskey ran as an anti-war and anti-Nixon candidate, while Ashbrook opposed Nixon's détente policies towards the China and the Soviet Union. In the New Hampshire primary McCloskey's platform of peace garnered 11% of the vote to Nixon's 83%, with Ashbrook receiving 6%.

Nixon won 1323 of the 1324 delegates to the GOP convention, with McCloskey receiving the vote of one delegate from New Mexico.

Primaries popular vote result[21]:

[edit] Third parties

Perhaps the only major third party candidate in the 1972 elections, Conservative congressman John G. Schmitz of the American Party (the party on whose ballot George Wallace ran in 1968), was on the ballot in 32 states and received 1,099,482 popular votes. Unlike Wallace, however, he received no electoral votes at all. Schmitz would make news again in the late 1990s when his daughter, Mary Kay Letourneau, was arrested for statutory rape.

John Hospers of the newly-formed Libertarian Party was on the ballot only in Colorado and Washington and received only 3,573 popular votes. However, he did receive one electoral vote from Virginia from a Republican dissenter (see below). His vice-presidential candidate, Tonie Nathan became the first woman in U.S. history to receive an electoral vote.

Benjamin Spock was nominated by the People's Party, which was formed in 1971.

[edit] General election

[edit] Campaign

George McGovern ran on a platform of ending the Vietnam War and instituting guaranteed minimum incomes for the nation's poor. However, his campaign was greatly crippled because of the electro-shock therapy controversy involving his original running mate, and because his view on the primaries had alienated many powerful Democrats. With McGovern's presence weakened by these factors, the Republicans successfully portrayed him as a half-crazy radical, and McGovern suffered a landslide defeat of 61%–38% to Nixon. Nixon's percentage of the popular vote was only sightly 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), with only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia voting for the challenger, resulting in an even-more-lopsided Electoral College tally.

Richard Nixon ran a harsh campaign with an aggressive policy of keeping tabs on perceived enemies, and his campaign aides committed the Watergate burglary to steal Democratic Party information during the election. Nixon's level of personal involvement with the burglary was never clear, but his tactics during the later coverup would eventually destroy his public support and lead to his resignation. Also, Nixon's so-called "southern strategy" of reducing the pressure for school desegregation and otherwise restricting federal efforts on behalf of blacks had a powerful attraction to northern blue-collar workers as well as southerners.

The election was held on November 7. This election had the lowest voter turnout for a presidential election since 1948, with only 55 percent of the electorate voting. Part of the steep drop from the previous elections can be explained by the ratification of the 26th Amendment which expanded the franchise to 18-year-olds.

[edit] Results

Presidential Candidate Party Home State Popular Vote Electoral
Vote		 Running Mate Running Mate's
Home State		 RM's Electoral
Vote
Count Pct
Richard Milhous Nixon Republican California 47,168,710 60.7% 520 Spiro Theodore Agnew Maryland 520
George Stanley McGovern Democratic South Dakota 29,173,222 37.5% 17 Robert Sargent Shriver Maryland 17
John G. Hospers Libertarian California 3,674 0.0% 1(a) Theodora Nathan Oregon 1(a)
John G. Schmitz American California 1,100,868 1.4% 0 Thomas J. Anderson Tennessee 0
Linda Jenness Socialist Workers Georgia 83,380 0.1% 0 Andrew Pulley Illinois 0
Benjamin Spock People's California 78,759 0.1% 0 Julius Hobson District of Columbia 0
Other 135,414 0.2% – Other –
Total 77,744,027 100 % 538 538
Needed to win 270 270

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1972 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (August 7, 2005).

Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (August 7, 2005).

(a)A Virginia faithless elector, Roger MacBride, though pledged to vote for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, instead voted for Libertarian candidates John Hospers and Theodora Nathan.

[edit] Close states

  1. Minnesota, 5.5%
  2. Rhode Island, 6.2%
  3. South Dakota, 8.6%
  4. Massachusetts, 9.0%
  5. Wisconsin, 9.7%

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • From 1960 to the present day, this was the only Presidential election in which Minnesota voted for a Republican.
  • The 1972 election was the first in American history in which a Republican candidate carried every Southern state. Arkansas was the last Southern state to go Republican; prior to 1972, the Natural State was NOT carried by the Democrats only twice: 1872 (by Republican Ulysses S. Grant) and 1968 (by third-party candidate George Wallace). Nixon carried Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia in 1968, and Barry Goldwater carried Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina in 1964. All of Goldwater's states except South Carolina went to Wallace in 1968.
  • Hunter S. Thompson’s book Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 provides an informed and surreal insiders look at the year and campaigns working up to the election.
  • Alice Cooper (Vincent Damon Furnier) of the Alice Cooper Band participated in the election of 1972 as a publicity stunt to promote the group's album "Billion Dollar Babies", which was due to be released in 1973. Though the shock rock band received few votes, their campaign song "Elected" became a hit.[citation needed]

[edit] Citations

  1. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  2. ^ Our Campaigns - OH US President - D Primary Race - May 02, 1972
  3. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  4. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  5. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  6. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  7. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  8. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  9. ^ Our Campaigns - IL US President - D Primary Race - Mar 21, 1972
  10. ^ Our Campaigns - Candidate - Stephen M. Young
  11. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  12. ^ Our Campaigns - Candidate - Stephen M. Young
  13. ^ Our Campaigns - Candidate - Gertrude W. Donahey
  14. ^ Our Campaigns - Candidate - Gertrude W. Donahey
  15. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  16. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972
  17. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - D Convention Race - Jul 10, 1972
  18. ^ a b c d e f g h Meet the Press Transcript for July 15, 2007. "Interview with Robert Novak
  19. ^ a b c d e f Kansas City Star. "With another disclosure, Novak bedevils the dead" by Steve Kraske. July 28, 2007. The original story is a dead link. An archival copy is available here.
  20. ^ Columbia Tribune. "A slice of history: Biographers of the late U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri will find some vivid anecdotes when they comb through his large collection of journals, letters and transcripts housed in Columbia" by Terry Ganey. August 19, 2007
  21. ^ Our Campaigns - US President - R Primaries Race - Mar 07, 1972

[edit] External links

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