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Richard Nixon Republican
The 1972 United States presidential election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon from California defeated Democratic U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. Until the 1984 election, this was the largest margin of victory in the Electoral College in a U.S. presidential election, and as of 2022, it remains the last time a presidential candidate captured more than 60% of the popular vote. It was also the first presidential election that would see California move ahead of New York in the number of each state's electoral votes, a gap that has since widened.
Nixon 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 person to run for a major party's presidential nomination.
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 re-election 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.