1972 United States presidential election
Nixon easily swept aside challenges from two Republican congressmen in the 1972 Republican primaries to win re-nomination. McGovern, who had played a significant role in changing the Democratic nomination system after the 1968 election, mobilized the anti-Vietnam War movement and other liberal supporters to win his party's nomination. Among the candidates he defeated were early front-runner Edmund Muskie, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey, and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American to run for a major party's presidential nomination.


1972 United States presidential election
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. Nixon maintained a large and consistent lead in polling. Separately, 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". McGovern's campaign was seriously damaged by the revelation that his running mate, Thomas Eagleton, had undergone electroconvulsive therapy as a treatment for depression. Eagleton was replaced on the ballot by Sargent Shriver.


1972 United States presidential election
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. McGovern took just 37.5% of the popular vote, while John G. Schmitz of the American Independent Party won 1.4% of the vote. Nixon received almost 18 million more votes than McGovern, and he holds the record for the widest popular vote margin in any post–World War II United States presidential election. The 1972 presidential election was the first since the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.


1972 United States presidential 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, due to a separate corruption charge. Gerald Ford succeeded Agnew as vice president, then in the following year succeeded Nixon as president, making him the only U.S. president in history not to be elected to the office on a presidential ticket.


1972 United States presidential election
As of 2021, this was the last time that Minnesota voted for the Republican candidate in a presidential election, the longest such streak for any state, and only once since then have Rhode Island and Hawaii done so, when they voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election. This was also the most recent presidential election in which the entire Midwest was won by a single candidate.


1972 United States presidential election
Despite this election delivering Nixon's greatest electoral triumph, Nixon later wrote in his memoirs that "it was one of the most frustrating and in many ways the least satisfying of all."


1972 United States presidential election, Republican nomination, Primaries
Richard Nixon was a popular incumbent president in 1972, as he was credited with opening the People's Republic of China as a result of his visit that year, and achieving détente with the Soviet Union. Polls showed that Nixon held a strong lead in the Republican primaries. He was challenged by two candidates, liberal Pete McCloskey from California and conservative John Ashbrook from Ohio. McCloskey ran as an anti-war candidate, while Ashbrook opposed Nixon's détente policies towards China and the Soviet Union. In the New Hampshire primary McCloskey garnered 19.8% of the vote to Nixon's 67.6%, with Ashbrook receiving 9.7%.


1972 United States presidential election, Republican nomination, Primaries
Nixon won 1323 of the 1324 delegates to the Republican convention, with McCloskey receiving the vote of one delegate from New Mexico. Vice President Spiro Agnew was re-nominated by acclamation; while both the party's moderate wing and Nixon himself had wanted to replace him with a new running-mate (the moderates favoring Nelson Rockefeller, and Nixon favoring John Connally), it was ultimately concluded that such action would incur too great a risk of losing Agnew's base of conservative supporters.


1972 United States presidential election, Republican nomination, Convention
Seven members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War were brought on federal charges for conspiring to disrupt the Republican convention. They were acquitted by a federal jury in Gainesville, Florida.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination
Overall, fifteen people declared their candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination. They were:


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Primaries
Senate Majority Whip Ted Kennedy, the youngest brother of late President John F. Kennedy and late United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was the favorite to win the 1972 nomination, but he announced he would not be a candidate. The favorite for the Democratic nomination then became Senator Ed Muskie, the 1968 vice-presidential nominee. Muskie's momentum collapsed just prior to the New Hampshire primary, when the so-called "Canuck letter" was published in the Manchester Union-Leader.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Primaries
The letter, actually a forgery from Nixon's "dirty tricks" unit, claimed that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians – a remark likely to injure Muskie's support among the French-American population in northern New England. Subsequently, the paper published an attack on the character of Muskie's wife Jane, reporting that she drank and used off-color language during the campaign. Muskie made an emotional defense of his wife in a speech outside the newspaper's offices during a snowstorm. Though Muskie later stated that what had appeared to the press as tears were actually melted snowflakes, the press reported that Muskie broke down and cried, shattering the candidate's image as calm and reasoned.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Primaries
Nearly two years before the election, South Dakota Senator George McGovern entered the race as an anti-war, progressive candidate. McGovern was able to pull together support from the anti-war movement and other grassroots support to win the nomination in a primary system he had played a significant part in designing.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Primaries
On January 25, 1972, New York Representative Shirley Chisholm announced she would run, and became the first African-American woman to run for the Democratic or Republican presidential nomination. Hawaii Representative Patsy Mink also announced she would run, and became the first Asian American to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Primaries
On April 25, George McGovern won the Massachusetts primary. Two days later, journalist Robert Novak quoted a "Democratic senator" later revealed to be Thomas Eagleton as saying: "The people don't know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion, and legalization of pot. Once middle America – Catholic middle America, in particular – finds this out, he's dead." The label stuck and McGovern became known as the candidate of "amnesty, abortion, and acid". It became Humphrey's battle cry to stop McGovern—especially in the Nebraska primary.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Primaries
Alabama Governor George Wallace, an anti-integrationist, did well in the South (winning nearly every county in the Florida primary) and among alienated and dissatisfied voters in the North. What might have become a forceful campaign was cut short when Wallace was shot in an assassination attempt by Arthur Bremer on May 15. Wallace was struck by five bullets and left paralyzed from the waist down. The day after the assassination attempt, Wallace won the Michigan and Maryland primaries, but the shooting effectively ended his campaign and he pulled out in July.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Primaries
In the end, McGovern won the nomination by winning primaries through grassroots support in spite of establishment opposition. McGovern had led a commission to re-design the Democratic nomination system after the divisive nomination struggle and convention of 1968. 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. Some of the principles of the McGovern Commission have lasted throughout every subsequent nomination contest, but the Hunt Commission instituted the selection of Superdelegates a decade later in order to reduce the nomination chances of outsiders like McGovern and Carter.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Vice presidential vote
Most polls showed McGovern running well behind incumbent President Richard Nixon, except when McGovern was paired with Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. McGovern and his campaign brain trust lobbied Kennedy heavily to accept the bid to be McGovern's running mate, but he continually refused their advances, and instead suggested U.S. Representative (and House Ways and Means Committee chairman) Wilbur Mills of Arkansas and Boston Mayor Kevin White. Offers were then made to Hubert Humphrey, Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff, and Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, all of whom turned it down. Finally, the vice presidential slot was offered to Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, who accepted the offer.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Vice presidential vote
With hundreds of delegates displeased with McGovern, the vote to ratify Eagleton's candidacy was chaotic, with at least three other candidates having their names put into nomination and votes scattered over 70 candidates. A grassroots attempt to displace Eagleton in favor of Texas state representative Frances Farenthold gained significant traction, though was ultimately unable to change the outcome of the vote.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Vice presidential vote
The vice-presidential balloting went on so long that McGovern and Eagleton were forced to begin making their acceptance speeches at around 2 am, local time.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Vice presidential vote
After the convention ended, it was discovered that Eagleton had undergone psychiatric electroshock therapy for depression and had concealed this information from McGovern. A Time magazine poll taken at the time found that 77 percent of the respondents said, "Eagleton's medical record would not affect their vote." Nonetheless, the press made frequent references to his "shock therapy", and McGovern feared that this would detract from his campaign platform. McGovern subsequently consulted confidentially with preeminent psychiatrists, including Eagleton's own doctors, who advised him that a recurrence of Eagleton's depression was possible and could endanger the country should Eagleton become president. McGovern had initially claimed that he would back Eagleton "1000 percent", only to ask Eagleton to withdraw three days later. This perceived lack of conviction in sticking with his running mate was disastrous for the McGovern campaign.


1972 United States presidential election, Democratic nomination, Vice presidential vote
McGovern later approached six different prominent Democrats to run for vice-president: Ted Kennedy, Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Abraham Ribicoff, Larry O'Brien and Reubin Askew. All six declined. Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law to John, Robert, and Ted Kennedy, former Ambassador to France and former Director of the Peace Corps, later accepted. 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 percent.


1972 United States presidential election, Third parties
The only major third party candidate in the 1972 election was conservative Republican Representative John G. Schmitz, who ran on the American Independent Party ticket (the party on whose ballot George Wallace ran in 1968). He was on the ballot in 32 states and received 1,099,482 votes. Unlike Wallace, however, he did not win a majority of votes cast in any state, and received no electoral votes, although he did finish ahead of McGovern in four of the most conservative Idaho counties. Schmitz's performance in archconservative Jefferson County was the best by a third-party Presidential candidate in any free or postbellum state county since 1936 when William Lemke reached over twenty-eight percent of the vote in the North Dakota counties of Burke, Sheridan and Hettinger.


1972 United States presidential election, Third parties
John Hospers and Tonie Nathan of the newly formed Libertarian Party were on the ballot only in Colorado and Washington, but were official write-in candidates in four others, and received 3,674 votes, winning no states. However, they did receive one Electoral College vote from Virginia from a Republican faithless elector (see below). The Libertarian vice-presidential nominee Theodora "Tonie" Nathan became the first Jew and the first woman in U.S. history to receive an Electoral College vote.


1972 United States presidential election, Third parties
Linda Jenness was nominated by the Socialist Workers Party, with Andrew Pulley as her running-mate. Benjamin Spock and Julius Hobson were nominated for president and vice-president, respectively, by the People's Party.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Campaign
McGovern ran on a platform of immediately ending the Vietnam War and instituting guaranteed minimum incomes for the nation's poor. His campaign was harmed by his views during the primaries (which alienated many powerful Democrats), the perception that his foreign policy was too extreme, and the Eagleton debacle. With McGovern's campaign weakened by these factors, the Republicans successfully portrayed him as a radical left-wing extremist incompetent to serve as president. Nixon led in the polls by large margins throughout the entire campaign.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Campaign
With an enormous fundraising advantage and a comfortable lead in the polls, Nixon concentrated on large rallies and focused speeches to closed, select audiences, leaving much of the retail campaigning to surrogates like Vice President Agnew. Nixon did not, by design, try to extend his coattails to Republican congressional or gubernatorial candidates, preferring to pad his own margin of victory.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results
Nixon's percentage of the popular vote was only marginally 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. Only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia voted for the challenger, resulting in an even more lopsided Electoral College tally. McGovern garnered only 37.5 percent of the national popular vote, the lowest share received by a Democratic Party nominee since John W. Davis won only 28.8 percent of the vote in the 1924 election. The only major party candidate since 1972 to receive less than 40 percent of the vote was Republican incumbent President George H. W. Bush who won 37.4 percent of the vote in the 1992 election, a race that (as in 1924) was complicated by a strong third party vote.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results
Although the McGovern campaign believed that its candidate had a better chance of defeating Nixon because of the new Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution that lowered the national voting age to 18 from 21, most of the youth vote went to Nixon. This was the first election in American history in which a Republican candidate carried every single Southern state, continuing the region's transformation from a Democratic bastion into a Republican stronghold as Arkansas was carried by a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in a century.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results
By this time, all the Southern states, except Arkansas and Texas, had been carried by a Republican in either the previous election or the one in 1964 (although Republican candidates carried Texas in 1928, 1952 and 1956). As a result of this election, Massachusetts became the only state that Nixon did not carry in any of the three presidential elections in which he was a candidate. This is one of only two elections since 1856 that Massachusetts and Rhode Island did not support the same candidate. The other election which the two states did not do so is 1980.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results
This presidential election was the first since 1808 in which New York did not have the largest number of electors in the Electoral College, having fallen to 41 electors vs. California's 45. Additionally, through 2020 it remains the last one in which Minnesota was carried by the Republican candidate.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results
McGovern won a mere 130 counties, plus the District of Columbia and four county-equivalents in Alaska, easily the fewest counties won by any major-party presidential nominee since the advent of popular presidential elections. In nineteen states, McGovern failed to carry a single county; he carried a mere one county-equivalent in a further nine states, and just two counties in a further seven.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results
In contrast to Walter Mondale's narrow 1984 win in Minnesota, McGovern comfortably did win Massachusetts, but lost every other state by no less than five percentage points as well as 45 states by more than ten percentage points – the exceptions being Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and his home state of South Dakota. This election also made Nixon the second former vice president in American history to serve two terms back-to-back, after Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and 1804. Since McGovern carried only one state, bumper stickers reading "Nixon 49 America 1", "Don't Blame Me I'm From Massachusetts" and "Massachusetts: The One And Only" were popular for a short time in Massachusetts.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results
Nixon managed to win 18% of the African American vote (Gerald Ford would get 16% in 1976). He also remains the only Republican in modern times to threaten the oldest extant Democratic stronghold of South Texas: this is the last election when the Republicans have won Hidalgo or Dimmit counties, the only time Republicans have won La Salle County between William McKinley in 1900 and Donald Trump in 2020, and one of only two occasions since Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 that Republicans have gained a majority in Presidio County. More significantly, the 1972 election was the most recent time several highly populous urban counties – including Cook in Illinois, Orleans in Louisiana, Hennepin in Minnesota, Cuyahoga in Ohio, Durham in North Carolina, Queens in New York and Prince George's in Maryland – have voted Republican.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results
Nixon, who became term-limited under the provisions of the Twenty-second Amendment as a result of his victory, became the first (and, as of 2020, only) presidential candidate to win a significant number of electoral votes in three presidential elections since ratification of that Amendment. Prior to ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment, three other presidential candidates (Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland and Franklin D. Roosevelt) also polled significant electoral votes in at least three elections (unlike Nixon, Jackson, Cleveland and Roosevelt also won the popular vote at least three times although only Roosevelt was elected President more than twice). Counting Nixon's successful runs for vice president in the 1950s, he matched Franklin Roosevelt's achievements of winning the presidency or vice-presidency in four elections (and polling significant electoral votes in five) while overreaching Roosevelt by winning electoral votes for president or vice president in every state.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results
Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Results, Results by state
For the first time since 1828 Maine allowed its electoral votes to be split between candidates. Two electoral votes were awarded to the winner of the statewide race and one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. This was the first time the Congressional District Method had been used since Michigan used it in 1892. Nixon won all four votes.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Close states
States where margin of victory was more than 5 percentage points, but less than 10 percentage points (43 electoral votes):


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Voter demographics
Nixon won 36 percent of the Democratic vote, according to an exit poll conducted for CBS News by George Fine Research, Inc. This represents more than twice the percentage of voters who typically defect from their party in presidential elections. Nixon also became the first Republican presidential candidate in American history to win the Roman Catholic vote (53–46), and the first in recent history to win the blue-collar vote, which he won by a 5-to-4 margin. McGovern narrowly won the union vote (50–48), though this difference was within the survey's margin of error of 2 percentage points.


1972 United States presidential election, General election, Voter demographics
McGovern also narrowly won the youth vote (i.e. those aged 18 to 24) 52–46, a narrower margin than many of his strategists had predicted. Early on, the McGovern campaign also significantly overestimated the number of young people who would vote in the election: they predicted that 18 million would have voted in total, but exit polls indicate that the actual number was about 12 million. McGovern did win comfortably among both African-American and Jewish voters, but by somewhat smaller margins than usual for a Democratic candidate.


1972 United States presidential election, Post-election investigations into the Watergate break-in
On June 17, 1972, five months before election day, five men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel in Washington, D.C.; the resulting investigation led to the revelation of attempted cover-ups of the break-in within the Nixon administration. What became known as the Watergate scandal eroded President Nixon's public and political support in his second term, and he resigned on August 9, 1974, in the face of probable impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal from office by the Senate.


1972 United States presidential election, Post-election investigations into the Watergate break-in
As part of the continuing Watergate investigation in 1974–75, federal prosecutors offered companies that had given illegal campaign contributions to President Nixon's re-election campaign lenient sentences if they came forward. Many companies complied, including Northrop Grumman, 3M, American Airlines and Braniff Airlines. By 1976, prosecutors had convicted 18 American corporations of contributing illegally to Nixon's campaign.


1972 United States presidential election in Alabama
The 1972 United States presidential election in Alabama was held on November 7, 1972. Incumbent President Richard Nixon won Alabama, winning 72.43% of the vote to George McGovern's 25.54%. This is also the best showing in the state by a Republican presidential candidate. As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last election in which Dallas County, Hale County, Russell County, and Perry County voted for the Republican candidate.


1972 United States presidential election in Alabama
With 72.43% of the popular vote, Alabama would prove to be Nixon's fourth strongest state in the 1972 election after Mississippi, Georgia and Oklahoma.


1972 United States presidential election in Alaska
The 1972 United States presidential election in Alaska took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose three representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Alaska
Alaska was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R-California) with 58.1% of the popular vote against  George McGovern (D-South Dakota) with 34.6%. Although Alaska has only voted Democratic once, which was for Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, during the state's first four presidential elections Alaska was no more Republican than the nation at-large: indeed owing to a fairly strong third-party campaign Nixon won 2.57 percent less of the vote in Alaska that over the entire country, although McGovern received 2.88 percent less than his national share. McGovern won small majorities in Kusilvak and Bethel Census Areas, and the Democrats also received a plurality in North Slope Borough. Elsewhere, Nixon carried every borough and census area, with as typical the Republicans’ most dominant showings being in the relatively heavily populated areas around Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna Borough.


1972 United States presidential election in Alaska
Nixon ultimately won the national vote as well, defeating McGovern and winning re-election. Representative John G. Schmitz (R-California) ran under the American Independent Party ticket. While Alaska would prove to be Schmitz's second strongest state after Idaho, he failed to equal the success of George Wallace’s campaign in the previous election. This is the one and only time that Alaska voted to the left of Hawaii.


1972 United States presidential election in Arizona
The 1972 United States presidential election in Arizona took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. State voters chose six representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Arizona
Arizona was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R–California), with 61.64% of the popular vote, against George McGovern (D–South Dakota), with 30.38% of the popular vote. Linda Jenness and John G. Schmitz, the only other candidates on the ballot, combined for just over 52,000 votes and over seven percent of Arizona's popular vote. Even in a huge landslide, this result left Arizona seven percentage points more Republican than the nation at-large.


1972 United States presidential election in Arizona
In a state that would reflect McGovern's national results, the Democratic nominee won only one county in Arizona: heavily unionized Greenlee County, where no Republican had won before this nor would win until George W. Bush in 2000.


1972 United States presidential election in Arizona
The massive surge in ballots for the socialist candidate (there had been only 85 in 1968, now there were nearly 31,000) was due to a ballot error in Pima County. Linda Jenness, the Socialist Workers candidate, was only 31 and thus was deemed ineligible to be put on the ballot. Instead, the names of her six electors were listed. However, the layout of the ballot was what caused the confusion. Atop the ballot was "President of the United States (Vote for one)" with the given options of Nixon, McGovern, and Schmitz.


1972 United States presidential election in Arizona
Below that was "Presidential Electors (Vote for six)," and the names of the six Socialist Worker's electors. The text labelling the as "Socialist Worker's Party" was only half as small as the instructions to vote for six, and thus 28,000 voters followed both instructions, likely perceiving the Socialist Electors as being part of a separate race. The Secretary of State, Wesley Bolin, and Attorney General, Gary Nelson, at first agreed the ballots ought to be thrown out.


1972 United States presidential election in Arizona
Pima county election chief David O'Hern and county attorney Rose Silver believed the ballots should be counted since the Socialist Workers candidate had been disqualified. In the end, that was the line of thinking taken, and the votes were counted for both the candidates they were cast for. This resulted not only in an increase in the state's total by some 28,000, but that in some Democratic southside precincts, the Socialist ticket outperformed Nixon and was the only place the landslide victor came third anywhere in the country.


1972 United States presidential election in Arkansas
The 1972 United States presidential election in Arkansas took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. State voters chose six representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Arkansas
Arkansas was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R–California), with 68.82% of the popular vote, against George McGovern (D–South Dakota), with 30.71% of the popular vote. John G. Schmitz was the only other candidate on the ballot, and, as the candidate for the American Independent Party, he received just over three thousand votes.


1972 United States presidential election in Arkansas
In a state that would reflect McGovern's national results, the Democratic nominee did not win a single county in Arkansas. This marked the first time that Arkansas had voted Republican in a presidential election since Ulysses S. Grant carried the state in 1872, and remains the best showing in the state by a Republican presidential candidate. As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last election in which Phillips County, Jefferson County, Lee County, Chicot County, and Desha County voted for a Republican presidential candidate.


1972 United States presidential election in California
The 1972 United States presidential election in California took place on November 7, 1972 as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. State voters chose 45 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in California
California voted for the Republican incumbent, Richard Nixon, over the Democratic challenger, South Dakota Senator George McGovern. Nixon took 55.00% of the vote to McGovern's 41.54%, a margin of 13.46%. Although California was Richard Nixon's home state, his performance in the state was somewhat underwhelming, as California's result was about 9% more Democratic than the nation as a whole.


1972 United States presidential election in California
Nixon had previously won California against John F. Kennedy in 1960 and then against Hubert Humphrey in 1968.


1972 United States presidential election in California
This was the first presidential election in which California had the most electoral college votes as a result of the 1970 census, a status it has maintained ever since.


1972 United States presidential election in Colorado
The 1972 United States presidential election in Colorado took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. State voters chose seven representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Colorado
Colorado voted for the Republican incumbent, Richard Nixon, over the Democratic challenger, South Dakota Senator George McGovern. Nixon took 62.61% of the vote to McGovern's 34.59%, a margin of 28.01 points.


1972 United States presidential election in Colorado
Like most of the rest of the Mountain West, Colorado voted powerfully Republican in 1972, giving Nixon a margin in excess of his national margin by 4.8%. Nevertheless, Pitkin County, home to Aspen, shifted powerfully against the national trend, switching from supporting Nixon in 1968 to supporting McGovern in 1972.


1972 United States presidential election in Connecticut
The 1972 United States presidential election in Connecticut took place on November 7, 1972. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Connecticut voters chose eight electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Connecticut
Connecticut was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Connecticut
Nixon carried Connecticut with 58.57% of the vote to McGovern's 40.13%, a victory margin of 18.44%. He won every county in the state.


1972 United States presidential election in Connecticut
As of 2020, this was the most recent presidential election in which the Republican nominee carried the cities of Bridgeport and New London.


1972 United States presidential election in Delaware
The 1972 United States presidential election in Delaware took place on November 7, 1972. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. State voters chose three electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Delaware
Delaware was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Delaware
Nixon carried Delaware with 59.60% of the vote to McGovern's 39.18%, a victory margin of 20.42%.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida
The 1972 United States presidential election in Florida was held on November 7, 1972, as part of the concurrent United States presidential election. Florida voters chose seventeen electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida, Background
After having been among the strongest parts of the Democratic "Solid South" between 1892 and 1944 – except when vehement pineywoods anti-Catholicism and extensive urban Republican voting gave the state's electoral votes to Herbert Hoover in 1928 – Florida turned into a Republican-leaning state at presidential level from 1948 due to the growth of a strongly business-oriented society in newer South Florida following World War II. Aided by this vote, the Republicans carried Florida in all three presidential elections from 1952 to 1960, despite losing the entire northern half of the state.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida, Background
The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a dramatic change in the next two elections. The classically Deep Southern northern part of the state, affected by turmoil over school and university desegregation, went powerfully to the staunch conservative Republican Barry Goldwater after having resisted the GOP in the previous four elections, and then turned to the segregationist candidacy of former and future Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1968. Contrastingly, the southern urban areas that had supported the Republicans between 1948 and 1960 contained huge numbers of former Northern retirees hostile to Goldwater's proposed privatization of Social Security, and turned to Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida, Background
The 1972 Democratic presidential primary in Florida saw Wallace easily carry the state and every county bar Dade, in a ballot that also featured a referendum on court-ordered busing. This referendum revealed that more three-fourths of the state's voters supported a constitutional ban on busing. The party primaries that year were especially divisive over the busing issue. John Lindsay, plus eventual party nominee George McGovern were supporters of busing who accused even their moderate rivals Hubert Humphrey and "Scoop" Jackson of being covert racists for their opposition thereto. As it turned out, Wallace – the opponent most feared by Nixon – was paralyzed by an attempted assassination in May, and McGovern won the nomination via powerful support in midwestern and Pacific States.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida, Background
Once McGovern won the nomination, he offered Florida Governor Reubin Askew the vice-presidential slot, but Askew turned the position down.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida, Primaries, Democratic
George Wallace would win a majority of the Democratic Primary vote in all of the counties in the state.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida, Primaries, Republican
Richard Nixon would end up winning a majority of the vote in all counties except for Desoto County.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida, Vote
Incumbent President Nixon overwhelmingly won the state of Florida with 71.91% of the vote, carrying all of Florida's 67 counties and seventeen electoral votes. Nixon's victory in Florida made it his fifth strongest state after Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma and Alabama. McGovern reached 40% of the vote only in Dade County with its substantial Jewish and Latin populations, plus Alachua County with its large population of liberal college students who were a major base for his candidacy – and the Democratic candidate only reached thirty percent of the vote in four other counties. Nixon's message enabled him to capture virtually all of the Wallace vote from 1968, as shown by the fact that pineywoods Holmes County, which had been Wallace's fifth-strongest county in 1968, was to be Nixon's fourth-best county in 1972 with over 92% of the vote.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida, Vote
In addition to hostility towards busing and the "acid, amnesty and abortion" policies which Nixon consistently accused McGovern of despite eventual running mate Sargent Shriver being firmly opposed to abortion, the Democratic campaign in Florida was also crippled by McGovern's policy of normalizing relationships with Fidel Castro's Cuba. Relationships with Cuba were a hotbed issue in the most liberal and least Southern region of the state around Miami, and drove even many voters who had supported Humphrey in 1968 to Nixon and the Republican Party. This allowed the GOP to carry Monroe County, which had consistently voted Democratic since 1888, by over 45%.


1972 United States presidential election in Florida, Vote
As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last election in which Gadsden County voted for a Republican presidential candidate.


1972 United States presidential election in Georgia
The 1972 United States presidential election in Georgia took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Georgia voters chose 12 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Georgia
Georgia was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R–California), with 75.04% of the popular vote, against George McGovern (D–South Dakota), with 24.65% of the popular vote. This made Georgia, even amidst a Republican landslide, 26% more Republican than the nation at-large and made it Nixon's second strongest state in the 1972 election. Although Mississippi was to give Nixon an even larger margin, in the 11 subsequent presidential elections only 1 statewide result – Ronald Reagan’s victory in Utah in 1980 – has provided so large a margin. This is also the best showing in the state by a Republican presidential candidate, as not even Ronald Reagan would win the state popular vote by 70%.


1972 United States presidential election in Georgia
In the South, McGovern was universally viewed as a left-wing extremist because of his support for busing and civil rights, plus his opposition to the Vietnam War, support for granting amnesty to draft dodgers and support for a $1,000 giveaway to each American as a solution to poverty. Many, especially Republican campaigners, also believed McGovern would legalize abortion and illicit drugs if he were elected – despite the fact that his running mate Sargent Shriver was firmly pro-life.


1972 United States presidential election in Georgia
In a state that would reflect McGovern's national results, the Democratic nominee did not win a single county in Georgia. Despite overwhelming Democratic dominance of the state for over a century, owing to the Republican leanings of several pro-Union North Georgia counties, chiefly Fannin but also Towns and Pickens, this was the first time any candidate had swept every Georgia county. Even more unusual, every county in the state would go on to vote for the Democratic candidate, Jimmy Carter (a Georgia native and former Georgia governor), in the next presidential election.


1972 United States presidential election in Georgia
The 1972 election constitutes the only time Hancock County has not voted Democratic since 1852. It is the last time the following counties have ever voted Republican: Calhoun, Clay, Fulton (which contains the state's largest city, Atlanta), Macon, Stewart, Talbot, Taliaferro, and Warren.


1972 United States presidential election in Hawaii
The 1972 United States presidential election in Hawaii took place on November 7, 1972. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Hawaii voters chose 4 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Hawaii
Hawaii was won by incumbent United States President Richard Nixon of California, who was running against former Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Nixon ran for a second time with former Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland, and McGovern ran with former U.S. Ambassador to France Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Hawaii
Nixon won the election in Hawaii with a decisive 25-point landslide, with a clear majority in all four counties. Nixon was the first Republican to win the state of Hawaii and the only one until Ronald Reagan won the state in 1984. It is the last occasion, and the only one apart from a very marginal case in 1960, when Hawaii has narrowly voted more Republican than the nation as a whole – since then it has become consistently one of the "bluest" states in the nation. This is also the one and only time that Hawaii voted to the right of Alaska.


1972 United States presidential election in Idaho
The 1972 United States presidential election in Idaho took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Idaho voters chose four representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Idaho
Idaho was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R–California), with 64.2 percent of the popular vote, against George McGovern (D–South Dakota), with 26.0% of the popular vote.


1972 United States presidential election in Idaho
In a state that would reflect McGovern's national results, the Democratic nominee did not win a single county in Idaho. In fact, John G. Schmitz, running under the "American Independent" banner as a remnant of George Wallace's 1968 campaign, ran second ahead of McGovern in Fremont, Jefferson, Lemhi and Madison Counties.


1972 United States presidential election in Idaho
Although due to the salience of the civil rights issue there had occurred numerous cases of unpledged and "Dixiecrat" candidates receiving almost the entire vote of Deep Southern counties, and a smaller number in other antebellum slave states, Schmitz' performances in Jefferson County was the best by a third-party presidential candidate in any non-Southern county since 1936 when William Lemke reached over twenty-eight percent of the vote in the North Dakota counties of Burke, Sheridan and Hettinger. With 9.30% of the popular vote, Idaho would be Schmitz's strongest state in the 1972 election.


1972 United States presidential election in Idaho
Nixon was the first Republican to sweep all Idaho's counties since Warren G. Harding in 1920, the first to carry Clearwater and Lewis Counties since Herbert Hoover in 1928, whilst the previous occasion the Republicans had won adjacent Nez Perce County was Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois
The 1972 United States presidential election in Illinois was held on November 7, 1972 as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Incumbent President Richard Nixon won the state of Illinois with 59.03 percent of the vote, carrying the state's 26 electoral votes. He defeated his main opponent, Democratic candidate George McGovern in Illinois by a large margin of 18.52%, which still left Illinois 4.63% more Democratic than the nation.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois
Nixon won all but one of Illinois’ 102 counties. The solitary exception was Jackson County, home to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, which notably had voted for Nixon in the previous election and was one of only five counties outside McGovern’s home state to switch from Republican to Democratic at this election. This election is the most recent in which Cook County voted Republican, the only Republican victory in St. Clair County since Calvin Coolidge in 1924, and the last until 2016 when Alexander County supported a Republican nominee. Nixon's 2,788,179 votes is the most received by a Republican presidential candidate in the state's history.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois, Election information
The primaries and general elections coincided with those for other federal offices (Senate and House) and those for state offices.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois, Election information, Turnout
Turnout in the primaries was 22.54%, with a total of 1,258,713 votes cast.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois, Election information, Turnout
Turnout in the general election was 75.99%, with a total of 4,723,236 votes cast.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois, Primaries
State-run primaries were held for the Democratic and Republican parties on March 21.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois, Primaries, Democratic
The 1972 Illinois Democratic presidential primary was held on March 21, 1972 in the U.S. state of Illinois as one of the Democratic Party's statewide nomination contests ahead of the 1972 presidential election.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois, Primaries, Democratic
The popular vote was a "beauty contest". Delegates were instead selected by direct-vote in each congressional districts on delegate candidates, who had either pledged to support a candidate or been uncommitted.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois, Primaries, Republican
The 1972 Illinois Republican presidential primary was held on March 21, 1972 in the U.S. state of Illinois as one of the Republican Party's statewide nomination contests ahead of the 1972 presidential election.


1972 United States presidential election in Illinois, Primaries, Republican
The popular vote was a "beauty contest". Delegates were instead selected by direct-vote in each congressional districts on delegate candidates, who had either pledged to support a candidate or been uncommitted.


1972 United States presidential election in Indiana
The 1972 United States presidential election in Indiana took place on November 7, 1972. All fifty states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. State voters chose 13 electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Indiana
Indiana was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Indiana
Nixon carried Indiana with 66.11% of the vote to McGovern's 33.34%, a victory margin of 32.77%. Although Indiana is one of the most reliable Republican states in the country, this is the only occasion where a Republican candidate (indeed, where any Presidential candidate) carried every county in the state. As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last time a Republican won Democratic-leaning Lake County in the northwestern corner of the state.


1972 United States presidential election in Iowa
The 1972 United States presidential election in Iowa took place on November 7, 1972. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Iowa voters chose eight electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Iowa
Iowa was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Iowa
Nixon carried Iowa with 57.61 percent of the vote to McGovern's 40.48 percent, a victory margin of 17.13 percent. This would be the last time until Donald Trump in 2016 when a Republican presidential candidate won Wapello County and Des Moines County.


1972 United States presidential election in Kansas
The 1972 United States presidential election in Kansas took place on November 7, 1972. All fifty states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose seven electors to the Electoral College, which voted for President and Vice President.


1972 United States presidential election in Kansas
Kansas was won by incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon by a landslide of 38 points; Nixon succeeded in securing re-election against Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Nixon ran with Vice President, and former Maryland Governor, Spiro Agnew for vice president, and McGovern ran with United States Ambassador Sargent Shriver for vice president. In the midst of a nationwide Republican landslide, Nixon took 67.66 percent of Kansas’ vote to McGovern's 29.50%.


1972 United States presidential election in Kansas
Kansas voters turned out heavily for Nixon, who won every county in the state. McGovern's loss was heavily influenced by his portrayal as a left-wing extremist by the Republican Party throughout the campaign. As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last election – and the sole election since 1932 – that the Republican presidential nominee carried Wyandotte County, home to Kansas City.


1972 United States presidential election in Kentucky
The 1972 United States presidential election in Kentucky took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Kentucky voters chose 9 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. These electors at the time were Frank Stubblefield (D), Romano L. Mazzoli (D), Gene Snyder (R), Tim Lee Carter (R), William P. Curlin Jr. (D), Carl D. Perkins (D), John Sherman Cooper (R), Marlow W. Cook (R).


1972 United States presidential election in Kentucky
Kentucky was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R–California), with 63.77 percent of the popular vote, against George McGovern (D–South Dakota), with 34.77%. Nixon won 112 out of 120 counties in the state of Kentucky. Kentucky had voted Republican in the previous election, 1968, but did not continue with that pattern into the 1976 election.


1972 United States presidential election in Kentucky
This was the first time a Republican ever carried every county in, or even won at all, the Jackson Purchase region of Kentucky.


1972 United States presidential election in Louisiana
The 1972 United States presidential election in Louisiana took place on November 7, 1972. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. State voters chose ten electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Louisiana
Louisiana was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Louisiana
Nixon carried Louisiana with 65.32% of the vote to McGovern's 28.35%, a victory margin of 36.97%. In a state that would reflect McGovern's national results, the Democratic candidate only won one parish (West Feliciana) in Louisiana. As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last election when Iberville Parish, Madison Parish, St. James Parish, St. Helena Parish, and East Carroll Parish voted for a Republican presidential candidate. This is also the last time the city of New Orleans has voted Republican.


1972 United States presidential election in Louisiana
With 4.95 percent of the popular vote, Louisiana would prove to be American Party candidate John G. Schmitz’ fifth strongest state after Idaho, Alaska, Utah and Oregon.


1972 United States presidential election in Maine
The 1972 United States presidential election in Maine took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election which was held throughout all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Maine
Maine was won by the incumbent Republican president Richard Nixon by a landslide 23 point margin over his Democratic challenger, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Nixon took 61.46% of the vote, totaling up to 256,458 votes, to McGovern’s 38.48%, and 160,584 votes. In the midst of Nixon’s massive 49-state landslide victory, Maine voted almost exactly as the country did, only voting about 0.7% more Republican than the nation as a whole.


1972 United States presidential election in Maine
Richard Nixon swept every county in the state except for Androscoggin, where McGovern won by a mere 103 votes. Androscoggin was the solitary county McGovern won in the Northeast outside Massachusetts or the metropolises of New York and Philadelphia.


1972 United States presidential election in Maine
Nixon's victory was the first of five consecutive Republican victories in the state, as Maine would not vote for a Democratic candidate again until Bill Clinton in 1992. Since then it has become a safe Democratic state, not being seriously competitive until 2016.


1972 United States presidential election in Maine
Since 1972 no presidential candidate of either party has surpassed Nixon’s 61.46% of the vote in Maine (the closest being Ronald Reagan’s 60.83% in 1984).


1972 United States presidential election in Maryland
The 1972 United States presidential election in Maryland was held on November 7, 1972 as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Both the Democratic and Republican (Sargent Shriver and Spiro Agnew, respectively) Vice Presidential nominees were from Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Maryland
Maryland was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and Vice President Spiro Agnew (a Maryland native), winning 61.26% of the vote to George McGovern and Shriver's 37.36%. Nixon won every county-equivalent in the state except Baltimore City. He won over 77% of the vote in Carroll County, and over 70% in 9 counties overall. This is the last time Prince George's County has voted Republican in a presidential election, and the last of only 6 occasions since the emergence of the Republican Party that Maryland has voted more Republican than the nation as a whole.


1972 United States presidential election in Maryland
Of his three presidential campaigns, this is the only time in which Nixon carried the home state of his running mate. Nixon failed to carry Maryland in 1968 and in 1960 did not carry Massachusetts, the home state of his then running mate Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.


1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts
The 1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all 50 states and D.C.. Voters chose 14 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts
Massachusetts voted for the Democratic nominee, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, over incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon of California. McGovern's running mate was U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland, who had replaced Senator Thomas Eagleton during the campaign, while Nixon ran with incumbent Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts
McGovern carried Massachusetts with 54.20% of the vote to Nixon's 45.23%, a Democratic victory margin of 8.97%.


1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts
In the midst of a massive nationwide Republican landslide in which Richard Nixon had carried 49 states, Massachusetts proved to be the only state in the nation that would cast its electoral votes for George McGovern, joined by the District of Columbia. McGovern also carried the state by a surprisingly comfortable nine-point margin, making the state 32% more Democratic than the national average in the 1972 election.


1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts
McGovern, a staunch liberal Democrat best known for his strong principled opposition to the Vietnam War, was painted by the Nixon campaign as an extremist too far to the left of the American mainstream at the time, and this paid off in delivering Nixon a nationwide re-election landslide.


1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts
Prior to 1972, Massachusetts had been a Democratic-leaning state since 1928, and a Democratic stronghold since 1960. But McGovern's comfortable victory in 1972 still stands out, as many other traditional Democratic strongholds abandoned the Democrats in 1972. For example, Nixon took neighboring Rhode Island by six points, even though it normally voted similarly to Massachusetts. J. Anthony Lukas noted that many New Yorkers felt that Ted Kennedy's outsize money and influence in Massachusetts played a major role in keeping the state in the Democratic column, summing up this explanation simply as "Teddy did it". Kennedy was also the brother-in-law of Democratic vice presidential nominee Shriver.


1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts
On the county map, McGovern carried 9 of the state's 14 counties, including the most heavily populated parts of the state. The state's capital and largest city, Boston, would prove to be a McGovern stronghold; voters in Suffolk County, where Boston is located, cast 66% of the vote for McGovern. Boston is one of the few areas in the country where McGovern actually outperformed Jimmy Carter’s performance four years later in 1976; while Carter won narrow popular and electoral victories nationally, he carried Suffolk County with only 61%. On the other hand, though Ronald Reagan would carry the state twice, this election remains the last time Dukes County, which had never voted Democratic before Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide in 1964, has voted Republican.


1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts
The results in 1972 made Massachusetts the only state which Richard Nixon never carried in any of his three presidential campaigns. It voted for its native son John F. Kennedy when he defeated Nixon in 1960, and Hubert Humphrey when he lost to Nixon in 1968.


1972 United States presidential election in Massachusetts, "Don't blame me! I'm from Massachusetts"
After Nixon was re-elected, he would later resign only a year and a half into his second term due to his involvement in the Watergate scandal and the illegal activities he committed. Afterwards, a bumper sticker with the words "Don't blame me! I'm from Massachusetts" became a symbol of the sentiments felt by Massachusetts residents after the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation due to criminal activity, it served as a proverbial message to the other 49 states not to "blame them" for Nixon's election, as Massachusetts was the only state that voted against Nixon's re-election.


1972 United States presidential election in Michigan
The 1972 United States presidential election in Michigan took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose 21 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Michigan
Michigan was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R–California), with 56.20% of the popular vote, against George McGovern (D–South Dakota), with 41.81% of the popular vote. John G. Schmitz was the only other candidate on the ballot, and, as the candidate for the American Independent Party, he received over 63,000 votes. This result nonetheless made Michigan 8% more Democratic than the nation-at-large.


1972 United States presidential election in Michigan
Delta, Lake, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties were the only four of Michigan's 83 counties to vote for McGovern. Washtenaw was one of only five counties outside of South Dakota (McGovern's home state) to vote for McGovern after voting for Richard Nixon in 1968. Nixon became the first Republican to win the White House without carrying Washtenaw since Benjamin Harrison in 1888.


1972 United States presidential election in Minnesota
The 1972 United States presidential election in Minnesota took place on November 7, 1972 as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose ten electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Minnesota
Minnesota was won by the Republican Party candidate, incumbent President Richard Nixon, who won the state over U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota by a margin of 95,923 votes, or 5.51%, the closest state in the election. This result made Minnesota a staggering 15% more Democratic than the nation as a whole. Nixon went on to win the election nationally, by a landslide margin of 23.15% of the popular vote. McGovern carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.


1972 United States presidential election in Minnesota
The 1972 election was the last time Minnesota—a state which has generally favored Democrats since the New Deal—was carried by a Republican. This state would go on to have the longest streak voting for Democrats out of any starting after this election, as every other state would be won by Ronald Reagan in the landslide year of 1984. During Nixon's second term as President, the Watergate scandal resulted in the loss of the Republican Party's credibility both nationally and in Minnesota. The damage caused by Watergate was so pronounced that the Republican Party of Minnesota was forced to rebrand itself as the "Independent-Republican Party" from 1975 to 1995 in order to distance itself from the national Republican Party.


1972 United States presidential election in Minnesota
Nixon also remains the last Republican to carry heavily populated Hennepin County, with 1972 also the last time that county did not vote the same as neighboring Ramsey County.


1972 United States presidential election in Mississippi
The 1972 United States presidential election in Mississippi was held on November 7, 1972. Incumbent President Nixon won the state of Mississippi with 78.20% of the vote, his most overwhelming dominance in any of the fifty states, carrying the Magnolia State's seven electoral votes. Nixon defeated McGovern by a whopping margin of 58.57%, a larger margin than McGovern's in the District of Columbia, and a margin never equalled in any state since and exceeded by any Republican nominee in the party's history only five times. This also marked the first time since 1944 that the state was on the winning side of the presidential election.


1972 United States presidential election in Mississippi
McGovern carried only three counties – Claiborne, Holmes and Jefferson – all of which have overwhelming majority black populations. In archconservative, racially sensitive Mississippi, McGovern was universally viewed as a left-wing extremist because of his support for busing and civil rights, plus his opposition to the Vietnam War, support for granting amnesty to draft dodgers and support for a thousand-dollar giveaway to each American as a solution to poverty. Many, especially Republican campaigners, also believed McGovern would legalize abortion and illicit drugs if he were elected – despite the fact that his running mate Sargent Shriver was firmly pro-life.


1972 United States presidential election in Mississippi
Consequently, the proportion of white voters supporting McGovern was utterly negligible, and even the newly enfranchised and loyally Democratic African-American population did not accept McGovern's radical ideas, with the result that for the second time in three elections one of the historically strongest members of the former Democratic Solid South became the most Republican state in the nation. Even in a huge landslide, Mississippi voted 34% more Republican than the nation at-large. As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last election in which the following counties voted for a Republican presidential candidate: Marshall, Quitman, Bolivar, Sharkey, Wilkinson, Humphreys, Coahoma, Noxubee, and Tunica.


1972 United States presidential election in Missouri
The 1972 United States presidential election in Missouri took place on November 7, 1972. All fifty states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose 12 electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Missouri
Missouri was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Missouri
In a state substantially part of the conservative South, McGovern was viewed by many voters as a left-wing extremist because of his support for busing and civil rights, plus his opposition to the Vietnam War, support for granting amnesty to draft dodgers and support for a thousand-dollar giveaway to each American as a solution to poverty. Many, especially Republican campaigners, also believed McGovern would legalise abortion and illicit drugs if he were elected – despite the fact that his running mate Sargent Shriver was firmly pro-life. These fears of McGovern's social radicalism were especially pronounced amongst poorer whites, who were abundant in the southern part of Missouri.


1972 United States presidential election in Missouri
Nixon carried Missouri with 62.29% of the vote to McGovern's 37.71%, a victory margin of 24.58%. Nixon won all but two jurisdictions: Monroe County and St. Louis City, and was the first Republican to ever carry southern secessionist Mississippi County and Maries County, the first since Abraham Lincoln in 1864 to carry “Little Dixie” Howard and Randolph Counties, and the first since Ulysses S. Grant in 1868 to carry Lewis, Lincoln, Ralls and Ray Counties. As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last election in which Jackson County, which contains most of Kansas City, as well as Independence, the hometown of former Democratic president Harry S. Truman (who died seven weeks after the election), voted for a Republican presidential candidate.


1972 United States presidential election in Montana
The 1972 United States presidential election in Montana took place on November 7, 1972, and was part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Montana
Montana strongly voted for the Republican nominee, President Richard Nixon, over the Democratic nominee, Senator George McGovern. Nixon won Montana by a margin of 20.08%; however McGovern still did 0.4% better than he did nationally.


1972 United States presidential election in Nebraska
The 1972 United States presidential election in Nebraska took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose five representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Nebraska
Nebraska was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R–California), with 70.5% of the popular vote, against George McGovern (D–South Dakota), with 29.5% of the popular vote.


1972 United States presidential election in Nebraska
In a state that would reflect McGovern's national results, the Democratic nominee did not win a single county in Nebraska. Out of Nixon's three campaigns, this was the only one in which Nebraska was not his strongest state, although he did outperform his past two performances here in popular vote percentage. Instead, Nebraska was his seventh strongest state after Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina.


1972 United States presidential election in Nevada
The 1972 United States presidential election in Nevada took place on November 7, 1972. All fifty states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. State voters chose three electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Nevada, Background
Since being won for the third time by William Jennings Bryan whose populism had attracted a state heavily dependent upon silver mining, Nevada had been a consistent bellwether swing state, although it had been trending Republican since World War II as air conditioning led to the development of Las Vegas as a “Sun Belt” city. Richard Nixon had narrowly lost this heavily Catholic state to John F. Kennedy in 1960, but would comfortably defeat both Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace in 1968. However, the Democrats had rebounded in 1970 to regain the governorship, although the party lost the attorney general position for the first time since 1890.


1972 United States presidential election in Nevada, Background
Nevada held no Democratic primary in 1972, and once McGovern's nomination was an established fact every poll suggested Nixon would win the state very easily, typically by around a two-to-one margin.


1972 United States presidential election in Nevada, Vote
Nevada was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Nevada, Vote
Nixon carried Nevada with 63.68% of the vote to McGovern's 36.32%, a victory margin of 27.36%. In a state that would reflect McGovern's national results, the Democratic nominee did not win a single county in Nevada, making Nixon only the second Republican after Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 to sweep all Nevada's counties.


1972 United States presidential election in New Hampshire
The 1972 United States presidential election in New Hampshire took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all 50 states and D.C. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in New Hampshire
New Hampshire was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate incumbent Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate United States Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in New Hampshire
Nixon took 63.98% of the vote to McGovern's 34.85%, a margin of 29.12%.


1972 United States presidential election in New Hampshire
New Hampshire in this era normally leaned Republican, having not gone Democratic since the nationwide Democratic landslide of 1964.


1972 United States presidential election in New Hampshire
As Nixon won re-election nationally in a 49-state landslide, New Hampshire easily remained in the Republican column, with McGovern's only victories coming from neighboring Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.


1972 United States presidential election in New Hampshire
On the county map, Nixon swept all 10 of the state's counties, breaking 60% in 7 of them. As in previous elections, Carroll County and Belknap County were the most Republican counties in the state, both voting over 70% for Nixon. McGovern's strongest county was Strafford County, where he managed 41.3% of the vote to Nixon's 57.8%.


1972 United States presidential election in New Hampshire
Amidst Nixon's landslide nationwide win, New Hampshire would weigh in as almost 6% more Republican than the national average, and would be the most Republican state in the Northeast.


1972 United States presidential election in New Hampshire
Nixon had previously won New Hampshire in both 1960 and 1968.


1972 United States presidential election in New Jersey
The 1972 United States presidential election in New Jersey took place on November 7, 1972. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose 17 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in New Jersey
New Jersey was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate incumbent Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate United States Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in New Jersey
Nixon carried New Jersey with 61.57% to McGovern's 36.77%, a margin of 24.80%.


1972 United States presidential election in New Jersey
Nixon swept every county in New Jersey, including even traditional Democratic strongholds like Essex County, Mercer County, and Hudson County. Nixon's unique nationwide appeal to working-class Democrats in 1972 was most evident in his performance in Hudson County; the traditionally heavily Democratic county, which Nixon had lost decisively with less than forty percent of the vote in both 1960 and 1968, went to Nixon in 1972 by a 60–39 margin. This remains the last election in which a Republican presidential nominee has won Essex County, although it was still McGovern's strongest, only narrowly going to Nixon by a 50–48 margin. Mercer County was the second-closest, with Nixon winning it, 52–47. Nixon's strongest county was rural Sussex County, where he received 74% of the vote.


1972 United States presidential election in New Jersey
New Jersey in this era was a swing state with a slight Republican lean, and this pattern continued with the results of 1972. In the midst of nationwide Republican landslide, New Jersey voted basically how the nation voted, its result being 1% more Republican than the national average.


1972 United States presidential election in New Jersey
This was the third time in five presidential elections (1956–72) that the winning candidate swept New Jersey's counties in an election, having also happened in 1956 and 1964. It had only happened once before, when Warren G. Harding achieved it in 1920 and, as of 2020, has not happened since.


1972 United States presidential election in New Mexico
The 1972 United States presidential election in New Mexico took place on November 7, 1972. This was the fifteenth Presidential Election which New Mexico participated in.


1972 United States presidential election in New Mexico
All fifty states plus The District of Columbia, were part of this presidential election. State voters chose four electors to represent them in the Electoral College, who voted for the President and Vice President. South Dakota Senator George McGovern was nominated to run against Nixon, and was defeated in one of the most lopsided elections in United States history. McGovern lost every state except Massachusetts to Nixon.


1972 United States presidential election in New Mexico
New Mexico was won by President Richard Nixon by a 24-point landslide, mirroring the national popular vote margin by a near perfect amount. McGovern won only two counties: he comfortably won Rio Arriba County by 12.6 percentage points, and also won San Miguel County by 2.5 percentage points. The 1972 election remains the last when Santa Fe, Taos or Mora Counties provided a Republican majority or plurality, and Nixon won Mora County by a mere thirty votes. At the other extreme, solidly Republican Lea County in the Plains region was won by Nixon by 55.4 percent, and Lincoln County, which had not voted Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 landslide, by 55.9 percent.


1972 United States presidential election in New Mexico
This was the fifteenth Presidential Election which New Mexico participated in.


1972 United States presidential election in New York
The 1972 United States presidential election in New York took place on November 7, 1972. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose 41 electors to the Electoral College, which voted for President and Vice President.


1972 United States presidential election in New York
New York was won by incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon, who succeeded in securing re-election against Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Nixon ran with Vice President, and former Maryland Governor, Spiro Agnew for vice president, and McGovern ran with United States Ambassador Sargent Shriver for vice president. In the midst of a nationwide Republican landslide, Nixon took 58.54% of the vote in New York State to McGovern's 41.21%, a margin of 17.34%. New York weighed in for this election as more Democratic than the national average by about 6%.


1972 United States presidential election in New York
Nearly all counties in New York State turned out for Nixon, and only the New York City boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan voted for McGovern. McGovern was able to win New York City as a whole with victories in three boroughs, taking two-thirds of the vote in Manhattan and also winning the Bronx and Brooklyn, however Nixon was able to put in a relatively strong performance citywide, winning Queens and Staten Island.


1972 United States presidential election in New York
1972 remains the last election in which a Republican presidential nominee has won the borough of Queens, a heavily populated county historically key to Republican competition in New York. This was also the last election in which a Republican presidential nominee has won the upstate counties of Erie County, where the city of Buffalo is located, and Albany County, where the state capital of Albany is located (and in turn, the last Republican to win every county of upstate New York). All three of these counties have become solidly Democratic in the years that have followed.


1972 United States presidential election in New York
The presidential election of 1972 was an extremely partisan election for New York, with 99.75% of the electorate voting either Republican or Democrat. Having delivered as President a period of relative economic stability and growth, and showing promising movements towards peace in Vietnam, Nixon was able to gain reelection with electors from every State in the U.S., except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. The Vietnam War continued to be a strong issue during this election, with both candidates declaring desire to end the conflict.


1972 United States presidential election in New York
This was the first election since 1808 in which New York did not have the largest number of electors in the Electoral College, having fallen to 41 electors versus California's 45 as a result of the 1970 census. It is also the only presidential election since 1948 in which New York did not vote the same as Massachusetts.


1972 United States presidential election in North Carolina
The 1972 United States presidential election in North Carolina took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose 13 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in North Carolina
North Carolina voted strongly for Republican nominee President Richard Nixon, over Democratic nominee Senator George McGovern. North Carolina voted overwhelmingly for President Nixon, who won 69.46% to 28.89%, one of the biggest margins in the country. This is the most Republican result in North Carolina presidential history.


1972 United States presidential election in North Carolina
McGovern won only the typically extremely strong Democratic counties of Northampton and Orange – two counties with a record of having voted Democratic at every election since 1900, apart from Orange County’s vote against the Catholic Al Smith in 1928. Even in these counties, where most Democratic candidates expect to receive well over sixty percent of the vote and Walter Mondale in his disastrous 1984 loss won by over 13 percent, McGovern won by only 236 votes in Northampton County and 1,002 out of over 23,000 in Orange County.


1972 United States presidential election in North Carolina
In the process Nixon managed to challenge the long-established Democratic bastion in the state’s northeast, which rivals South Texas as the longest-lived extant Democrat stronghold in the entire United States. It is the only time since 1900 that Hoke, Hertford and Bertie Counties have voted against the Democratic candidate, the only time that Durham and Washington Counties has voted for the Republican candidate since 1928, and the only time Anson, Halifax, Warren and Edgecombe Counties have supported a Republican candidate since 1896.


1972 United States presidential election in North Carolina
This is the first election in which a presidential candidate won North Carolina with more than 1,000,000 votes. This is also the best Republican presidential election performance in the history of the state.


1972 United States presidential election in North Dakota
The 1972 United States presidential election in North Dakota took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose three representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in North Dakota
North Dakota was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R–California), with 62.07 percent of the popular vote, against George McGovern (D–South Dakota), with 35.79 percent of the popular vote, a 26.28 percent margin of victory. Three other candidates were on the ballot as independents, but only California Congressman John G. Schmitz received a significant vote tally, although even Schmitz received just 2.01 percent of North Dakota's total.


1972 United States presidential election in North Dakota
In a state that would reflect McGovern's national results, the Democratic nominee only won one county (Rolette) in North Dakota.


1972 United States presidential election in Ohio
The 1972 United States presidential election in Ohio took place on November 7, 1972. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. State voters chose 25 electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Ohio
Ohio was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R) by a margin of 21.56%. Nixon won every county in the state except Lucas and Athens Counties, which McGovern won by only 0.95% and 1.22% respectively, and gained a majority in all eighty-six winning counties except Cuyahoga, Mahoning and Summit Counties. Nixon's biggest win was in Union County where he obtained 75.89 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, this result made Ohio 3% more Democratic than the nation-at-large.


1972 United States presidential election in Ohio
This was the last occasion until 2012 that Belmont, Jefferson and Monroe Counties voted for a Republican presidential candidate, the last until 2016 that Trumbull County would vote Republican, the last until 2020 that Mahoning County would do so, and remains the last to date where Cuyahoga County has supported the Republican candidate.


1972 United States presidential election in Oklahoma
The 1972 United States presidential election in Oklahoma was held on November 7, 1972 as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose eight electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Oklahoma
Oklahoma voted in a landslide for incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon over his Democratic challenger George McGovern. Nixon's winning margin of 49.70 percentage points made Oklahoma his third-strongest state, behind Mississippi and Georgia, and 26.55 percentage points more Republican than the nation at-large. Although in the twenty-first century Oklahoma has rivaled Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and increasingly West Virginia as the most Republican state in the nation, no presidential candidate in Oklahoma has ever equaled Nixon's margin of victory. Indeed, in the eleven presidential elections since this one, only twice has any state been carried by a larger percentage margin – both by Ronald Reagan in Utah, as part of the 1980 and 1984 elections.


1972 United States presidential election in Oklahoma
Nixon carried with over sixty percent of the vote all seventy-seven counties in the state, four years after he had won the Sooner State despite finishing behind both Democrat Hubert Humphrey and American Independent George Wallace in Love, McCurtain and Pushmataha Counties. American Independent John G. Schmitz was the only other candidate on the ballot, and he received 2.30 percent of the vote, although managing over eleven percent in the Panhandle county of Cimmaron. Nixon's feat of winning every county in Oklahoma would not be achieved by a Republican again until George W. Bush in 2004.


1972 United States presidential election in Oklahoma
In archconservative Oklahoma, McGovern was uniformly viewed as a left-wing extremist because of his support for busing and civil rights, plus his opposition to the Vietnam War, support for granting amnesty to draft dodgers and support for a thousand-dollar giveaway to each American as a solution to poverty. Many, especially Republican campaigners, also believed McGovern would legalise abortion and illicit drugs if he were elected – despite the fact that his running mate Sargent Shriver was firmly pro-life.


1972 United States presidential election in Oklahoma
Consequently, even the most loyal Southern Democrats from the southeastern part of the state almost completely deserted their traditional party for Nixon: Bryan, Choctaw, Coal, Johnston, and the above-mention Love and McCurtain Counties deserted their traditional Democratic Party for the first time ever. Nixon also almost completely captured the twenty percent of Oklahoman voters who had supported Wallace in 1968: exit polls suggested he won them over McGovern by a ratio of ten to one, and in the two Wallace counties of Pushmataha and Atoka Nixon totaled over seventy percent of the vote vis-à-vis less than thirty in 1968.


1972 United States presidential election in Oregon
The 1972 United States presidential election in Oregon took place on November 7, 1972. All fifty states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose six electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Oregon
Oregon was won by the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in Oregon
Nixon carried Oregon with 52.45% of the vote to McGovern's 42.33%, a victory margin of 10.12%.


1972 United States presidential election in Oregon
Independent candidate John G. Schmitz would carry 4.98% of the popular vote in Oregon, which would make the state his fourth strongest after Idaho, Alaska and Utah.


1972 United States presidential election in Pennsylvania
The 1972 United States presidential election in Pennsylvania took place on November 7, 1972, and was part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose 27 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania strongly voted for the Republican nominee, President Richard Nixon, over the Democratic nominee, Senator George McGovern. Nixon won Pennsylvania by a large margin of 19.98%, winning every county except for Philadelphia. This result nonetheless was over 3% more Democratic than the nation at-large. As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last election in which Allegheny County voted Republican,  and the last time that county did not vote the same as Philadelphia. As of 2020, this marked the last time when the Republican presidential nominee carried the state by more than 10 percentage points and the most recent time when any presidential candidate won the state by over 15 points.


1972 United States presidential election in Rhode Island
The 1972 United States presidential election in Rhode Island took place on November 7, 1972 as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose four representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Rhode Island
Rhode Island voted for the Republican incumbent, Richard Nixon, over the Democratic challenger, South Dakota Senator George McGovern. Nixon took 53.00% of the vote to McGovern's 46.81%, a margin of 6.19%. However this result made Rhode Island almost 14 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. This was the first election in 116 years in which Rhode Island did not vote for the same candidate as neighbouring Massachusetts, which has recurred only in 1980.


1972 United States presidential election in Rhode Island
As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the last election in which Providence County voted for the Republican candidate, and Nixon won the county by only 186 votes. This was the last presidential election where a Republican presidential candidate was able to win every county in the state of Rhode Island and also the last time a Republican presidential candidate won East Providence and North Providence.


1972 United States presidential election in South Carolina
The 1972 United States presidential election in South Carolina took place on November 7, 1972. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1972 United States presidential election. South Carolina voters chose 8 electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in South Carolina
South Carolina overwhelmingly voted for the Republican nominees, incumbent President Richard Nixon of California and his running mate Vice President Spiro Agnew of Maryland. Nixon and Agnew defeated the Democratic nominees, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota and his running mate U.S. Ambassador Sargent Shriver of Maryland.


1972 United States presidential election in South Carolina
Nixon carried South Carolina with 70.58% of the vote to McGovern's 27.92%, a victory margin of 42.66%. This election provided the Republican Party with its best presidential result in South Carolina since Reconstruction and constitutes the only presidential election where the Republican candidate carried every county in the state.


1972 United States presidential election in South Carolina
This is the only time, as of the 2020 presidential election, that Marlboro County has voted for a Republican presidential candidate since that county was founded in 1896, and the first time the Wallace counties of Union and Cherokee had ever voted Republican. It is the last time, as of the 2020 presidential election, when Orangeburg County, Williamsburg County, Marion County, Jasper County, Fairfield County, Hampton County, Lee County, and Allendale County have voted for a Republican presidential candidate. McCormick County would not vote Republican again until Donald Trump in 2016.


1972 United States presidential election in South Dakota
The 1972 United States presidential election in South Dakota took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose four representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in South Dakota
South Dakota was the home state of George McGovern, the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 United States presidential election.


1972 United States presidential election in South Dakota
Although McGovern, a member of the liberal wing of his party in a relatively conservative state, was at the time of the election a popular two-term Senator, having won re-election in 1968 with 56.8% of the vote, he lost the presidential vote here to incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon. McGovern's loss was heavily influenced by voter opposition to his supposedly far-left ideology. Despite his loss in South Dakota, it was the only state that voted more Democratic in 1972 than it had in 1968.


1972 United States presidential election in South Dakota
McGovern's loss of South Dakota made him the second candidate in four years to lose his state of birth (in 1968 Hubert Humphrey also lost South Dakota, where he was born) and residence (also in 1968 Richard Nixon lost New York, where he then lived). McGovern remained the last candidate to lose his state of residence until 2000, when Al Gore lost Tennessee. Mitt Romney would also lose his then-home state of Massachusetts in 2012 to Barack Obama, and Donald Trump would lose his home state of New York in 2016, to Hillary Clinton (who also hailed from New York).


1972 United States presidential election in South Dakota
Despite South Dakota weighing in as nearly 15 points more Democratic than the national average for this election, it is actually tied for the longest Republican streak since 1964.


1972 United States presidential election in Tennessee
The 1972 United States presidential election in Tennessee took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Tennessee voters chose 10 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.


1972 United States presidential election in Tennessee
Tennessee was won by incumbent President Richard Nixon (R–California), with 67.70% of the popular vote, against George McGovern (D–South Dakota), with 29.75% of the popular vote. John G. Schmitz was the only other candidate on the ballot, and, as the candidate for the American Party, he received over 30,000 votes.


1972 United States presidential election in Tennessee
Stewart, Houston, Perry, Lewis, and Jackson counties were the only five of Tennessee's ninety-five counties to vote for McGovern. As of the 2020 presidential election, this is the best showing of any Republican candidate in the state. This is also the last election in which Haywood County voted for a Republican presidential candidate.


1972 United States presidential election in Texas
The 1972 United States presidential election in Texas was held on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon overwhelmingly won the state of Texas with 66.20% of the vote, to the Democratic Party candidate George McGovern’s 33.24%, thus giving him the state’s 26 electoral votes. This was the first time a Republican won the state of Texas since Texas-born Dwight D. Eisenhower won it in 1956.


1972 United States presidential election in Texas
Nixon’s win in Texas made him the first ever Republican presidential candidate to break sixty percent of Texas’ popular vote in a presidential election, surpassing former President Dwight D. Eisenhower's performance of 55.26% in 1956, and even native son Lyndon B. Johnson’s 63.32% in 1964. Nixon is so far the only Republican candidate to break 65% of the state’s popular vote. At the county level, 246 of Texas’ 254 counties voted for Nixon, all by wide margins except heavily black Robertson County where Nixon won by a single vote. Nixon won 22 of Texas’ 24 congressional districts – with the 18th (Harris County) and 20th (Bexar County) constituting the only congressional districts McGovern won anywhere in the former Confederacy. McGovern, however, did not win either county each of these districts were located in.