United States presidential election, 1972
historyThe United States presidential election of 1972 was the 47th United States presidential election. It was held on November 7, 1972. The Democratic Party's nomination was eventually won by Senator George McGovern, who ran an anti-war campaign against incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon, but was handicapped by his outsider status as well as the scandal and subsequent firing of vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton.
Emphasizing a good economy and his successes in foreign affairs (especially ending American involvement in Vietnam and establishing relations with China), Nixon won the election in a massive landslide (a higher proportion than in 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson overwhelmingly defeated Barry Goldwater). Nixon won the election, with a 23.2% margin of victory in the popular vote, the fourth largest margin in presidential election history. He received almost 18 million more popular votes than McGovern—the widest margin of any U.S. presidential election.
Democratic candidates:
- George McGovern, Senator from South Dakota
- Hubert Humphrey, former Vice President from Minnesota
- George Wallace, Governor of Alabama
- Edmund Muskie, Senator from Maine
- Eugene J. McCarthy, former Senator from Minnesota
- Henry M. Jackson, Senator from Washington
- Shirley Chisholm, Representative from New York
- Terry Sanford, former Governor of North Carolina
- John Lindsay, Mayor of New York City, New York
- Wilbur Mills, Representative from Arkansas
- Vance Hartke, Senator from Indiana
- Fred Harris, Senator from Oklahoma
- Sam Yorty, Mayor of Los Angeles, California
Candidates gallery
Primaries
Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy, the younger brother of former President John F. Kennedy and former Attorney General Robert F. 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 favorite for the Democratic nomination then became Ed Muskie, the 1968 vice-presidential nominee. In August 1971 Harris polling amid a growing economic crisis, Muskie came out on top of incumbent Nixon if the election had been held that day.
However, prior to the New Hampshire primary, the "Canuck letter" was published in the Manchester Union-Leader. The letter, whose authenticity was later brought into question, claimed that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians. Subsequently, the paper published an attack on the character of Muskie's wife Jane, reporting that she drank and used off-color language. 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."»Remembering Ed Muskie", Online NewsHour, PBS, March 26, 1996 Muskie did 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.
New York Representative Shirley Chisholm announced she would run, and became the first African American to run for the Democratic or Republican presidential nomination and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
South Dakota Senator George McGovern entered the race as an anti-war, progressive candidate, picking-up where Eugene McCarthy had left off in 1968. McGovern was able to pull together support from the anti-war movement together with the youth block and other grassroots support to win the nomination in a primary system he had played a significant part in designing.
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 effectively ended his campaign.
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. On April 27, 1972 Novak reported in a column that an unnamed Democratic senator had said of McGovern: "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."
Novak was accused of manufacturing the quote and to rebut the criticism, Novak took the senator to lunch after the campaign and asked whether he could identify him as the source but the senator said he would not allow his identity to be revealed. "Oh, he had to run for re-election. The McGovernites would kill him if they knew he had said that," says Novak.
For years speculation continued that Novak had, in effect, acted as a surrogate for either other Democratic candidates or for the Republicans; an allegation Novak denied. Novak refused to identify his source until, on July 15, 2007 he disclosed on Meet the Press that the unnamed senator was Thomas Eagleton (McGovern’s first choice as his running mate). Eagleton had died in March 2007.
In the end, Senator George McGovern succeeded in winning the nomination by winning primaries through grassroots 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.
Primary results
Primaries popular vote results:
- Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska
- Former Senator Stephen M. Young of Ohio
- Governor Milton Shapp of Pennsylvania
- Former Governor Michael DiSalle of Ohio
- Ohio State Treasurer Gertrude W. Donahey
- Astronaut John Glenn of Ohio
Hubert Humphrey
- Mayor Jack Sensenbrenner of Columbus, Ohio
'''George McGovern
- Senator Frank Church of Idaho
- Senator John V. Tunney of California
George Wallace
- Former Governor Lester Maddox of Georgia
Shirley Chisholm
- Representative Ron Dellums of California
- Feminist leader and author Betty Friedan
- Reverend Jesse Jackson of Illinois
- Feminist leader, journalist, and DNC official Gloria Steinem
Terry Sanford
Henry M. Jackson
- Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia}}
1972 Democratic National Convention
Results:
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 (including one, Mao Zedong, who was not from the United States). The eventual winner was Senator Thomas Eagleton, who accepted the nomination despite not personally knowing McGovern very well, and privately disagreeing with many of McGovern's policies.
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.
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 initially claimed that he would back Eagleton “1000 percent,” only to ask Eagleton to withdraw three days later. This perceived indecisiveness was disastrous for the McGovern campaign.
After a week in which six prominent Democrats publicly refused the vice presidential nomination, Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law to John, Robert and Ted Kennedy, former Ambassador to France and former Director of the Peace Corps, finally 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
- Pete McCloskey, Representative from California
- John M. Ashbrook, Representative from Ohio
Candidates gallery
Primaries
Richard Nixon was a popular incumbent president in 1972, as he seemed to have reached détente with the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Polls showed that Nixon held a strong lead in the Republican primaries. 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 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 Republican convention, with McCloskey receiving the vote of one delegate from New Mexico.
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 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.
John Hospers of the newly-formed Libertarian Party was on the ballot only in Colorado and Washington and received 3,573 votes, winning no states. However, he did receive one electoral vote from Virginia from a Republican faithless elector (see below). The Libertarian vice presidential nominee Theodora Nathalia Nathan became the first woman in U.S. history to receive an electoral 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.
George McGovern ran on a platform of ending the Vietnam War and instituting guaranteed minimum incomes for the nation's poor. His campaign was greatly crippled because of the electro-shock therapy controversy involving his original running mate, and because his views during 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.
Richard Nixon, who has been called "the greatest school desegregator in American history" by historian Dean Kotlowski due to his compliance with a 1971 Supreme Court ruling mandating desegregation,Kotlowski, Dean J. (2001), p. 37 was in favor of desegregation but not through forced means such as busing. Nixon ran a 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.
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.
Nixon's percentage of the popular vote was only slightly 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.
Source (Popular Vote):
Source (Electoral Vote):
(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.
(b)In Arizona, Pima and Yavapai counties had a ballot malfunction that counted many votes for both a major party candidate and Linda Jenness of the Socialist Workers Party. A court ordered that the ballots be counted for both. As a consequence, Jenness received 16% and 8% of the vote in Pima and Yavapai, respectively. 30,579 of her 30,945 Arizona votes are from those two counties. Some sources do not count these votes for Jenness.
Corporate campaign contributions
As part of the continuing investigation in 1974–75, Watergate scandal prosecutors offered companies that had given illegal campaign contributions to Nixon's re-election campaign lenient sentences if they came forward. Many companies complied, including Northrup-Grunman, 3M, American Airlines and Braniff Airlines. By 1976, prosecutors had convicted 18 American corporations of contributing illegally to Nixon's campaign.
- 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, Arkansas was carried by a non-Democrat 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.
- 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.
- After the resignation of Nixon following the Watergate scandal, a bumper sticker became popular: "Don't blame me – I'm from Massachusetts".
- The 1972 election was the first election since 1808 in which New York didn't have the highest number of electors in the Electoral College.
- George McGovern presidential campaign, 1972
- 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.
- »1972 popular vote by counties
- »1972 popular vote by states
- »1972 popular vote by states (with bar graphs)
- [http://www.mit.edu/~mi22295/elections.html#1972 How close was the 1972 election?] — Michael Sheppard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- »Presidential campaign commercials 1972