General election campaign

The burden of campaigning for the Republican ticket was carried by a group of 36 “surrogate” candidates, an impressive list of cabinet officers, senators, and other Republican officials. Agnew campaigned rather quietly. The president had early laid to rest press speculation that Agnew might be dropped from the ticket in favour of John Connally. Connally instead helped Nixon by forming “Democrats for Nixon.” The longtime Democrat and friend of former president Lyndon B. Johnson could not swallow the idea of McGovern in the White House.

The very existence of a thriving Democrats for Nixon organization pointed up the fatal flaw in the McGovern electoral equation. As a candidate from the left wing of the national Democratic Party, McGovern had made an effective effort to reform the party’s delegate-selection procedures, and the new people had flooded the convention that nominated him, but many more were forced by the same reforms to stay home, not only from the convention but from organization meetings of the newly "McGovernized" state and local parties. In short, the McGovern candidacy shattered the fragile old Democratic coalition founded by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ethnic voters, blue-collar workers, and Southerners of all income levels did not see any McGovern Commission-type guidelines aimed at allowing more of them to take part in Democratic deliberations. Aside from procedural matters, there was also the fact that McGovern’s very liberal views were anathema to many Democratic voters.

Nixon’s campaign focused early and often on the more radical-sounding views of McGovern, highlighting his support of amnesty for Americans who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, his sometime musings that marijuana might better be decriminalized, and his support of legalized abortion (though with restrictions). In a manner not seen before in the 20th century, a Republican president managed to isolate his opponent on the very left of the American political spectrum. McGovern became, as establishment Democrats had feared he would, a “Goldwater of the Left.” Nixon captured more than 60 percent of the national vote to 37.5 percent for McGovern. And only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., kept McGovern from a total wipeout in the electoral college, which Nixon won 520–17.

For the results of the previous election, see United States presidential election of 1968. For the results of the subsequent election, see United States presidential election of 1976.

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Results of the 1972 election

The results of the 1972 U.S. presidential election are provided in the table.