The 1972 United States presidential election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election. Incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon from California defeated Democratic U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Nixon won the election in a landslide, taking 60. 7% of the popular vote and carrying 49 states while being the first Republican to sweep the South. Within two years of the election, both Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned from office: the former in August 1974, due to Watergate, the latter in October 1973.
About 1972 United States presidential election in brief
The 1972 United States presidential election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election. Incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon from California defeated Democratic U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Nixon won the election in a landslide, taking 60. 7% of the popular vote and carrying 49 states while being the first Republican to sweep the South. This was the largest margin of victory in the Electoral College for a Republican in a U. S. presidential election until the 1984 election. Within two years of the election, both Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned from office: the former in August 1974, due to Watergate, the latter in October 1973. Gerald Ford succeeded Agnew as vice president, then in the following year succeeded Nixon as president, making him the only president in history not to be elected to the office on a presidential ticket. As of 2020, this was the last time that Minnesota voted for the Republican candidate in a presidential election, and only once since then have Rhode Island and Hawaii done so, when they voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1984election. Overall, the Democratic Party were: Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy, the youngest brother of the late United States Senator John F. Kennedy, and Senator Robert F. F. Kennedys, the son of Senator Robert Kennedy and the grandson of Senator Edward Kennedy. The Republican Party was led by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Republican Party of the United States (RGOP) The RNC broke up after Nixon’s reelection committee broke into the Watergate complex to wiretap the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, a scandal that would later be known as \”Watergate\”.
Nixon emphasized the strong economy and his success in foreign affairs, while McGovern ran on a platform calling for an immediate end to the Vietnam War, and the institution of a guaranteed minimum income. McGovern’s campaign was further damaged by the revelation that his running mate, Thomas Eagleton, had undergone electroconvulsive therapy as a treatment for depression. Ed Muskie was the favorite to win the Democratic nomination, but he announced he would not be the presidential candidate. Muskie’s momentum collapsed just prior to the New Hampshire primary, when he claimed that Nixon had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians in a letter to the Manchester Union-Leader. He was replaced on the ballot by Sargent Shriver, who was the first African-American to run for a major party’s presidential nomination. The 1972 presidential election was the first since the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. It was also the first election since the introduction of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in 1920. The FEC was created to prevent future presidential candidates from running for more than one party’s nomination in the same year. The first election to be held in which both parties had a majority of seats in the House of Representatives. The election was held on November 7, 1972.
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