1972 United States presidential election

1972 United States presidential election
538 members of the Electoral College; 270 electoral votes needed to win
	Opinion polls
Turnout	56.2% 6.3 pp
	Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Nixon/Agnew and Blue denotes those won by McGovern/Shriver. Gold is the electoral vote for Hospers/Nathan by a Virginia faithless elector. Numbers indicate electoral votes cast by each state and the District of Columbia.
President before election; Richard Nixon; Republican	Elected President ; Richard Nixon; Republican

The 1972 United States presidential election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon defeated Democratic Senator George McGovern in a landslide victory. With 60.7% of the popular vote, Richard Nixon won the largest share of the popular vote for the Republican Party in any presidential election.

Nixon swept aside challenges from two Republican representatives in the Republican primaries to win renomination. McGovern, who had played a significant role in changing the Democratic nomination system after the 1968 presidential 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, governor George Wallace, and representative Shirley Chisholm.

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 lead in polling. Separately, Nixon's reelection committee broke into the Watergate complex to wiretap the Democratic National Committee's headquarters as part of the Watergate scandal. McGovern's general election campaign was damaged early on by revelations from his running mate Thomas Eagleton, as well as the perception that McGovern's platform was radical. Eagleton had undergone electroconvulsive therapy as a treatment for depression, and he was replaced by Sargent Shriver after only nineteen days on the ticket.

Nixon won the election in a landslide victory, taking 60.7% of the popular vote, carrying 49 states and becoming the first Republican to sweep the South, whereas McGovern took just 37.5% of the popular vote. This marked the most recent time that the Republican nominee carried Minnesota in a presidential election; it also made Nixon the only two-term vice president to be elected president twice. The 1972 election was the first since the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, further expanding the electorate.

Nixon and his vice president Spiro Agnew both resigned from office within two years of the election. Agnew resigned due to a bribery scandal in October 1973, and Nixon resigned in the face of likely impeachment and conviction as a result of the Watergate scandal in August 1974. Republican House Minority Leader Gerald Ford replaced Agnew as vice president in December 1973, and thus replaced Nixon as president in August 1974. Ford remains the only person in American history to become president without winning an election for president or vice president.

^ "National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789-Present". United States Election Project. CQ Press. Archived from the original on July 25, 2014. Retrieved February 21, 2023.

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[1] "National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789-Present". United States Election Project. CQ Press. Archived from the original on July 25, 2014. Retrieved February 21, 2023.

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