article

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

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.

McGovern chose Thomas Eagleton as a vice presidential candidate, but Eagleton had difficulty campaigning due to widespread media criticism about his initial failure to disclose his receiving electroshock therapy for depression, and was eventually replaced by Sargent Shriver. McGovern's backtracking on the issue caused his campaign further harm; McGovern initially claimed that he would back Eagleton “1000%”, only to ask Eagleton to withdraw 3 days later.

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 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 Pete 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 People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. In the New Hampshire primary McCloskey's platform of peace garnere 11% of the vote to Nixon's 83%, with Ashbrook receiving 6%.

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

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 John Hospers and Theodora Nathan.
(b) ''Wikipedia research has been unable to determine whether Anderson's home state was Tennessee or Texas at the time of this election.

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

Navigation

United States presidential elections | 1972 elections

Präsidentschaftswahl 1972 (Vereinigte Staaten) | Elezioni Presidenziali degli Stati Uniti del 1972 | Wybory prezydenckie w USA, 1972 | Yhdysvaltain presidentinvaalit 1972

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "United States presidential election, 1972".

Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world