United States presidential election, 1972

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The U.S. 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 and 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 of "acid, amnesty and abortion." The election took place on November 7, 1972. Nixon won the election in a landslide, with a 23.2% margin of victory in the popular vote, the largest such margin in Presidential election history.

Contents 1 Nominations 1.1 Democratic Party nomination 1.2 The Eagleton affair and the Vice Presidency 1.3 Republican Party nomination 1.4 Third parties 2 General election 2.1 Campaign 2.2 Results 3 Trivia 4 External links 5 Navigation

[edit] Nominations

[edit] 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
  • Sam Yorty, mayor of Los Angeles

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 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. Wallace did win the Maryland primary, but the shooting incident was effectively the 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. 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.

The tally:

• • George McGovern 1864.95
  • Henry “Scoop” 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
  • Edward M. Kennedy 12.7
  • Wayne Hays 5
  • Eugene McCarthy 2
  • Walter Mondale 2
  • Ramsey Clark 1

[edit] The Eagleton affair and the Vice Presidency

As several of his former opponents refused the honor, McGovern chose Missouri Senator Thomas F. Eagleton as his running mate. 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 Mao Tse-Tung and TV anchor Roger Mudd.

The tally:

• • Thomas F. Eagleton 1741.81
  • Sissy Farenthold 404.04
  • Mike Gravel 225.38
  • Endicott Peabody 107.26
  • Clay Smothers 74
  • Birch Bayh 62
  • Peter Rodino 56.5
  • Jimmy Carter 30
  • Shirley Chisholm 20
  • Moon Landrieu 18.5
  • 69 others 276.49

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] Republican Party nomination

• Republican Candidates
  • John Ashbrook, United States representative from Ohio
  • Pete McCloskey, a United States representative from California
  • Richard Nixon, the incumbent president of the United States

Nixon was a popular incumbent president in 1972, riding a wave of peace and prosperity, as he seemed to have reached détente with China and Russia. 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.

[edit] Third parties

Perhaps the only major third party candidate in the 1972 elections, 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 formed in 1971.

Ralph Nader was drafted as the Presidential candidate for the New Party.

[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.

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.

[edit] 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	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%	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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] External links

• 1972 popular vote by counties

[edit] Navigation

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