United States Presidential election, 1972

United States presidential election, 1972

1968 ← November 7, 1972 → 1976

All 538 electoral votes of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win Turnout 55.2% 5.7 pp   Nominee Richard Nixon George McGovern Party Republican Democratic Home state California South Dakota Running mate Spiro Agnew Sargent Shriver (replacing Thomas Eagleton) Electoral vote 520 17 States carried 49 1 + DC Popular vote 47,168,710 29,173,222 Percentage 60.7% 37.5%

Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Nixon/Agnew, blue denotes the one 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

Richard Nixon
Republican

Richard Nixon
Republican

The United States presidential election of 1972, the 47th quadrennial presidential election was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. The Democratic Party’s nomination was eventually won by Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, who ran an anti-war campaign against Republican incumbent President Richard Nixon, but was handicapped by his outsider status, limited support from his own party, the perception of many voters that he was a left-wing extremist and the scandal that resulted from the stepping down of vice-presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton.

Emphasizing a good economy and his successes in foreign affairs, such as coming near to ending American involvement in the Vietnam War and establishing relations with China, Nixon won the election in a landslide. Overall, he won 60.7% of the popular vote, a percentage only slightly lower than Lyndon B. Johnson’s in 1964, but with a larger margin of victory in the popular vote (23.2%), thus becoming the fourth largest in presidential election history. He received almost 18 million more popular votes than McGovern, the widest margin of any United States presidential election. McGovern only won the electoral votes in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. No candidate since has managed to equal or surpass Nixon’s total percentage or margin of the popular vote, and his electoral vote total and percentage have been surpassed only once, and his state total matched only once, by Ronald Reagan in 1984.

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