Nixon crushes McGovern: 2-1 landslide

President Nixon has won four more years in the White House with a landslide victory which by late tonight was being compared with George Washington's.

Only a small handful of votes needed to be counted before the result was plain, and the computers were confidently printing out the name of Richard M. Nixon as the next President of the United States.

To become the record landslider of recent times, Mr Nixon needs to finish with more than 61.1 per cent of the votes scored by President Johnson over Senator Goldwater in 1964 and President Roosevelt's 60.8 victory in 1936.

Whatever the final count, it was a staggering victory by a minority President elected with only 43 per cent of the popular vote in the close three-way 1968 race.

While the polls were still open on the Pacific coast, Mr Nixon was declared the clear winner in 27 of the 50 states, with 323 electoral college votes. Only 270 are needed to win. With 15 per cent of the popular vote counted Mr Nixon was winning with 66 per cent.

A clear pattern was emerging from the returns: in state after state Mr Nixon's margin over Senator McGovern was uncannily close to the combined total of Nixon-Wallace votes in 1968.

The results show that the great majority of the American people were satisfied with Mr Nixon's handling of the Vietnam war and believed his promise that "peace is at hand." It shows that the Watergate affair and other tales of corruption in high places concerned people hardly at all.

But above all it shows that a combination of Nixon and Wallace voters - whose common interest is race - can achieve in a Presidential election what Mr Nixon has called his "American majority."

Mr Nixon captured Democratic Pennsylvania and Illinois, a state which has a long record of voting with the winner. McGovern's hopes of capturing West Virginia, one of the few states in which Mr Nixon looked vulnerable, were dashed when the President was projected the 55 per cent winner. He was also predicted to take New York, which has a massive 41 electoral votes.

Analysis of the votes in Ohio and Indiana, both heavily industrialised states, showed Mr Nixon to have made huge inroads into the blue collar vote. In Ohio he was picking up 42 per cent of it, an increase of 19 per cent over his 1968 showing.

In Indiana, a more right-wing state in which Wallace ran strongly in 1968, the President was winning 58 per cent of the working class vote, an improvement of 23 per cent over last time. This showed clearly that the Wallace voters were sending their message to Washington via President Nixon.

McGovern's only victories with results in half of the states projected, was a win in Massachusetts (14) and in the solidly black district of Colombia (3). Analysis of the results indicated that blacks were not turning out for McGovern in the same force they did for Mr Humphrey in 1968.

But Mr Nixon's coat-tails were not helping Republicans to capture the Congress. In the early returns Democrats held two marginal senate seats and in a close race looked like capturing a third.

In Georgia the Democratic candidate for Senator was protected the winner in a race which the Republicans had high hopes of winning. Mr Sam Nunn, a Conservative Democrat who snuggled up close to the Wallace banner, was seen the Victor over the Republican Congressman Fletcher Thompson.

Massive ticket splitting was speeding Mr Nixon back to the White House for the "four more years" which his supporters have been chanting for all through this election, but at the same time ensuring that the Democrats would retain control of Congress.

Among early results projected was a victory by Senator John Sparkman, aged 73, the Democratic incumbent in Alabama against the challenge of a former Nixon Cabinet officer, Mr William "Red" Blount.

The South is more adept at ticket splitting than the North but what is called the "penance theory" may be working out. This means that Democrats voting for President Nixon are doing penance by supporting their own party's candidate in Congressional and local races. In Kentucky, a Republican Senate seat was involved in a neck and neck race, in spite of Mr Nixon's projected 61 per cent in that border State.

The Democratic challenger, Mr Walter Huddleston, was in a slight lead over the former Republican Governor Louie Nunn. If he were elected he would be the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Kentucky in 18 years.

· In Jackson, Michigan, Senator McGovern scored a 77 per cent triumph over Mr Nixon - at the Southern Michigan Prison. But this vote will not count. A State law prohibits prison inmates from casting official ballots, so they organized a mock election.

· Hanoi radio said that Senator McGovern would have difficulty defeating President Nixon because the President was supported by "reactionary capitalist forces which now control the United States" - particularly powerful military corporation.

All to Nixon

By 3 a.m. GMT, President Nixon had won the following states (electoral college votes in parentheses) : New York (41), Pennsylvania (27), Illinois (26), Michigan (21), Ohio (25), Texas (26), Florida (17), New Jersey (17), Missouri (12), N Carolina (13), Indiana (13), Virginia (12), Georgia (12), Maryland (10), Oklahoma (8), Connecticut (8), Tennessee (10), S Carolina (8), Kentucky (9), Alabama (9), Kansas (7), Mississippi (7), Arkansas (6), W Virginia (6), Vermont (3), New Hampshire (4), Delaware (3).