1976 United States presidential election 1976 United States presidential election The United States presidential election of 1976 was the 48th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1976. Democrat Jimmy Carter of Georgia defeated incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford from Michigan. Carter's win represented the lone Democratic victory in a presidential election held between 1968 and 1988. President Richard Nixon had won the 1972 election with Spiro Agnew as his running mate, but in 1973 Agnew resigned and Ford was appointed as Vice President via the 25th Amendment. When Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Ford ascended to the
Presidency of Richard Nixon Nixon's initial cabinet also contained an unusually small number of Ivy League graduates, with the exception of George P. Shultz, who held three different cabinet positions during Nixon's presidency. In 1973, as the Watergate scandal came to light, Nixon accepted the resignations of Haldeman, Erlichman, and Mitchell's successor as Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst. Haldeman was succeeded by Alexander Haig, who became the dominant figure in the White House during the last months of Nixon's presidency as Nixon increasingly focused on Watergate. As the Watergate scandal heated up in mid-1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew became a target in an unrelated investigation