The U.S. presidential election of 1972 was waged on the issues of civil rights and the Vietnam War. George Wallace, the popular segregationist governor of Alabama, ran a race-based campaign for the Democratic nomination, but saw his chances for nomination end when he was shot in May. The Democratic nomination was eventually won by George McGovern who ran an anti-war campaign against incumbent President Richard M. Nixon. Nixon won the election in a landslide, but the seeds of his eventual ouster were planted as people working for his campaign broke into the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate hotel.
Nominations
Democratic Party nomination
- Democratic Candidates
- Shirley Chisholm, U.S. representative from New York
- Fred R. Harris, U.S. senator from Oklahoma
- Hubert Humphrey, U.S. senator from Minnesota, former vice president, and 1968 presidential nominee
- Henry “Scoop” Jackson, U.S. senator from Washington
- John Lindsay, mayor of New York City
- Eugene McCarthy, former U.S. senator from Minnesota and candidate for the 1968 presidential nomination
- George McGovern, U.S. senator from South Dakota
- Wilbur Mills, U.S. representative from Arkansas
- Edmund Muskie, U.S. senator from Maine and 1968 vice presidential nominee
- George Wallace, governor of Alabama and 1968 American Independent Party presidential candidate
Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy had been the favorite to win the 1972 nomination, but his hopes were derailed by the bad publicity from the 1969 Chappaquiddick accident and thus he did not contest the nomination.
The establishment favorite for the nomination was Ed Muskie, the moderate 1968 Democratic vice presidential candidate. However, immediately prior to 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. When the New Hampshire primary was held shortly afterwards, Muskie did worse than expected, and the anti-war candidate McGovern came in a close second. McGovern picked up the momentum Muskie was supposed to have received, and this momentum was put to good use by McGovern's effective campaign manager, Gary Hart, a presidential contender himself 12 years later.
George Wallace did well in the South—he won every county in the Florida primary—and amongst alienated and dissatisfied voters with his “outsider” image. In 1968, the Alabama governor had led a law and order campaign similar to that of Richard Nixon, taking a lot of votes away from Nixon, especially in the South. This led Nixon to fear Wallace fronting a Democratic ticket in 1972. The president had supported the incumbent governor of Alabama in the gubernatorial primaries against Wallace in 1970, and had ordered IRS investigations of the Wallace campaign, to little effect. What could have become a forceful campaign was cut short when Wallace was shot and left paralyzed in an assassination attempt while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland. He would go on to win the Maryland primary, but that was the effective end of 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. Unfortunately, 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.
Vice President:
As several of his former opponents refused the honor, McGovern chose Missouri Senator Thomas F. Eagleton as his running mate.
Since over 800 delegates were actually committed to the reelection of President Nixon, a revolt over the Eagleton selection resulted in a scattering of the votes for 79 people, including Mao Zedong , Archie Bunker, and CBS news' Roger Mudd.
The discovery that Eagleton had failed to disclose his receiving electroshock therapy for depression, caused a major scandal which destroyed the campaign. McGovern initially claimed that he would back Eagleton “1000%”, only to ask Eagleton to withdraw 3 days later.
After a week in which six promenent democrats publicly refused the VP nomination, Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law to the Kennedys and former ambassador to France under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, finally said yes. He was officially nominated by a special session of the Democratic National Committee.
By this time, McGovern's polls had gone down from 41% to 24%.
Even though Nixon was not a popular incumbent president in 1972, most of the clandestine activities later leading to the Watergate scandal were not well known in the press yet, and the infighting that divided the Democrats would ensure that McGovern would be defeated.
The Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 covers McGovern's campaign to win the Democratic nomination.
Republican Party nomination
Despite polls showing that he had a strong lead over any potential Democratic nominee, President Nixon was challenged in the GOP primaries by two congressmen from both sides of the political spectrum, the liberal Paul McCloskey of California and the 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%.
the final tally at the convention was:
President:
Vice President:
Abstain 2
Other nominations
Conservative congressman John G. Schmitz of the American Party was on the ballot in 32 states and received 1,099,482 popular votes.
John Hospers of the newly formed Libertarian Party was on the ballot only in Colorado and Washington and received only 3,573 popular votes.
Benjamin Spock was nominated by the People's Party, which was also newly formed and which disbanded after the election.
Ralph Nader was drafted as the Presidential Candidate for the New Party.
General election
Campaign
George McGovern ran on a platform of ending the Vietnam War and instituting guaranteed minimum incomes for the nation's poor. Because he had alienated many powerful Democrats, because of difficulties with his running mate, Thomas Eagleton (who he eventually dropped and replaced with Sargent Shriver), and because of a successful Republican campaign to paint him as unacceptably radical, McGovern suffered a landslide defeat of 61%–38% to sitting President Richard Nixon. Nixon's percentage of the popular vote was only sightly less than Lyndon Johnson's record in the 1964 election. Nixon won a majority vote in 49 states, with only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia voting for the challenger, resulting in an even more lopsided Electoral College tally.
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.
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.
Results
| Presidential Candidate |
Party |
Home State |
Popular Vote |
Electoral Vote |
Running Mate |
Running Mate's
Home State |
Running Mate's
Electoral Vote |
| Count |
Percentage |
| Richard Milhous Nixon |
Republican |
California |
47,169,911 |
60.7% |
520 |
Spiro Theodore Agnew |
Maryland |
520 |
| George Stanley McGovern |
Democratic |
South Dakota |
29,170,383 |
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 |
|
83,380 |
0.1% |
0 |
Andrew Pulley |
|
0 |
| Benjamin Spock |
People's |
|
78,759 |
0.1% |
0 |
Julius Hobson |
|
0 |
| Other |
135,414 |
0.2% |
0 |
Other |
0 |
| Total |
77,744,027 |
100.0% |
538 |
Total |
538 |
| Needed to win |
270 |
Needed to win |
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 John Hospers and Theodora Nathan.
Trivia
- Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate Tonie Nathan became the first woman in U.S. history to receive an electoral vote.
- From 1960 to the present day, this was the only Presidential election in which Minnesota voted for a Republican.
Timeline
- May 15
- Governor and Presidential candidate George C. Wallace of Alabama is shot by Arthur H. Bremer at a Laurel, Md., political rally.
- June 17
- Watergate break-in, Washington, D.C.
- July 10 – July 13
- United States Democratic Party convention and nomination of George McGovern.
- August 21 – August 23
- United States Republican Party convention and nomination of Richard M. Nixon.
- November 7
- Richard M. Nixon defeats George McGovern.
See also
External links
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