PRESIDENTIAL ’72: A CASE STUDY
The 1972 election, in contrast to the extremely close contest of 1968, resulted in a
sweeping reelection victory for President Nixon and one of the most massive
presidential landslides of this century. The results were:
Richard M. Nixon (R)
George McGovern (D)
John G. Schmitz (AIP)
Others
Total:
Popular
Vote
Electoral
Vote
Popular
Vote
Percentage
47,169,905
29,170,383
1,098,635
295,407
5021
17
-1
60.7%
37.5%
1.4%
0.4%
_____________________
_______
___________
77,734,330
538
100.0%
At the beginning of 1972 it was by no means clear that
President Nixon was headed for an easy victory. In January
1972 Nixon and Maine’s Senator Edmund Muskie, then
considered the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination,
were about even in the national public opinion polls. And
Alabama’s Governor George Wallace, who had run as a thirdparty presidential nominee in 1968, remained the first choice
for President of about 12 to 15 percent of the nation’s voters.2
Throughout 1971 inflation and the general state of the
economy had been a worry to many citizens. In a poll taken in
November 1971, a majority of the American public, by a
margin of two to one, reported they felt the United States was
in a recession.3 In addition the public’s evaluation of Nixon’s
performance as President was not much more than lukewarm.
In January of 1972 Nixon’s rating stood about where it had
1
Nixon carried 49 states with a total of 521 electoral votes, but one Republican elector in Virginia
voted for John Hospers, the Libertarian party’s presidential nominee. Source: Congressional Quarterly,
Weekly Report, February 10, 1973, p. 308.
2 The Gallup poll taken on January 7-10, 1972, reported the following results on the presidential
preference question: Nixon, 43 percent; Muskie, 42 percent; Wallace, 12 percent; Undecided, 3
percent. Source: Gallup poll, news release for January 31, 1972. The Harris survey reported in early
July that 15 percent of the potential electorate preferred Governor Wallace for President. Washington
Post, July 2, 1972, p. A14.
3 The Harris survey, poll results for November 1971, in a news release for August 24, 1972.
been during most of 1971—49 percent approved of the way the President was
handling his job, and 39 percent disapproved.
During the spring and summer of 1972 these early prospects for a close
election changed dramatically. Several broad factors appeared responsible. First,
Nixon—as only an incumbent President can do—took a series of actions in the
foreign policy field that immediately improved his popularity ratings. In February he
became the first American President to visit Communist China. He was photographed
with Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and he exchanged toasts with Premier Chou En-lai.
Immediately after his triumphant return to Washington, Nixon’s job rating rose to 56
percent approval. Then the President went to the Soviet Union in May for a summit
meeting with party leader Leonid I. Brezhnev. His rating soared to 61 percent, the
highest point in nearly two years. (See Table 1.) By Labor Day, the traditional start of
a presidential campaign, Nixon was in a far stronger position than when the year
began; he would have been a formidable opponent for any presidential candidate the
Democrats could have offered.
Date of
TABLE 1
Interviews
President Nixon's
Job Rating, February 1971
1971-19721
June 1971
October 1971
January 1971
Early February 1972
Approve
Disapprove
No Opinion
51%
48
49
49
53
36%
39
37
39
36
13%
13
14
12
11
Trip to China
56
53
32
37
12
10
Trip to Moscow
Late May 1972
61
32
Late June 1972
56
33
Early December 1972 59
30
7
11
11
Early March 1972
Late March 1972
1
Responses to the question: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Nixon is handling
his job as president?"
Source: Gallup Opinion Index, Report No. 85, July 1972, p. 3, and Report No. 91, January
1973, p. 2.
A second event with major influence on the 1972 campaign was the shooting
of Governor George Wallace on May 15. Wallace had demonstrated considerable
strength in the Democratic presidential primaries during the spring. His support
within the party was not broad enough for him to capture the Democratic
presidential nomination. But had he run again as an independent—as he did in
1968—he might have had an important effect on the outcome of the election.
However, Wallace was seriously wounded, his legs paralyzed by the assassination
attempt, and he was unable to remain in the race. Two-thirds or more of the millions
of Wallace supporters ended up voting for President Nixon in November.
A third major event that reshaped the 1972 election was the decision by the
Democratic party to nominate Senator George McGovern. The Mcgovern victory
followed a bruising intraparty battle in which McGovern and the Democratic party’s
left wing defeated two candidates for the nomination who were widely viewed as
more moderate—Senator Muskie and Minnesota’s Senator Hubert Humphrey. The
Democratic primary battle left deep scars, and when the fall campaign began, 20
percent of more of the American people felt that Senator McGovern was an
“extremist.”4 The Eagleton affair added considerable to McGovern’s difficulties after
the Democratic convention and undoubtedly weakened his chances for the fall
election. But as the data in Table 2 make plain, McGovern was 19 percent points
behind Nixon in the polls before the Eagleton disclosures. In November, McGovern
lost the election by 23 precentage points.
Other factors undoubtedly also influenced the election returns. President
Nixon had initiated economic measures in the summer of 1971; in 1972 the economy
began to improve. By Labor Day the American public felt, by a margin of five to
three, that the United States was not the in a recession.5 In addition, Nixon had
steadily reduced the number of American ground troops in Vietnam, and shortly
before the election, the administration announced that it was on the verge of signing
a cease-fire agreement.
There were also some things that did not happen in 1972 which were probably
important to the election outcome. Although the bugging of the Democrats’
Gallup poll, Newsweek, August 28, 1972, p. 18. Later polls by the Harris survey showed even larger
percentages of the electorate who felt that Mcgovern was “too extreme.”
5 The Harris survey, report of interviews conducted August 30—September 1, 1972, news release for
September 25, 1972.
4
Date of
Interviews
TABLE 2
George McGovern
versus Richard April 21-24
Nixon: The Gallup
April 28-May 1
Poll's "Test
Election" Results
between April and
Election Eve, 1972 May 26-29
June 16-19
Approve
Disapprove
No Opinion
53%
49
34%
39
13%
12
President's Trip to Moscow
53
34
54
37
13
9
July 14-17
Democratic Convention
56
37
7
Late July
Eagleton Disclosures Prior to His Resignation
57
32
11
Eagleton's Resignation and the Subsequent
Selection of Shriver
August 5-12
August 25-28
September 22-25
October 13-18
November 2-4
Actual Election Results
(two-party vote)
57
31
12
Republican Convention
64
30
61
33
59
36
62
38
6
6
5
__
62
__
38
Source: Gallup Poll, Washington Post,September 10, 1972, p. A3; Gallup Opinion Index,
Report No. 89, November 1972, pp. 1-3.
Watergate headquarters in June was to become an explosive political controversy
after the election, Senator McGovern’s efforts to make an issue of “corruption in
government” by focusing on Watergate were largely unsuccessful.6
Nor did the large number of new voters, on whom McGovern forces had been
counting, help the Democratic candidate very much. Only about 12 million of the 25
million potential voters under the age of twenty-five actually voted. Among those
who did vote, President Nixon and Senator McGovern ran about even.7
6
A Gallup poll released on October 7, 1972 concluded that the Watergate incident was influencing few
voters. Only 3 percent of the public, the poll found, listed “corruption in government” as an “important
problem facing the country today.”
7 Although younger voters did not provide a large pro-McGovern majority, then were more proDemocratic than older voters, just as they have been in most other recent presidential elections. The
Gallup poll reported that voters under age thirty gave 48 percent of their votes to McGovern. Voters
age thirty to forty-nine gave him 33 percent, and those fifty and over gave him 36 percent. Source:
Gallup poll, news release for Decemeber 14, 1972.
On election day Nixon won everywhere except in Massachusetts and the
District of Columbia. But there was massive ticket splitting. As their presidential
ticket was being routed, the Democrats retained control of the House by 243 seats to
192, made a net gain of two Senate seats, and showed substantial strength in the races
for governor, and in the state legislatures.
In the presidential voting, however, two features were particularly striking. As
noted before, in 1972 the voters’ attitudes on issues and their perceptions of how the
candidates stood on those issues appear to have had major effect on the vote. In this
sense, the University of Michigan’s election analysts have called the 1972 presidential
contest an ideological election.”8 This in turn raises major questions about the future
of the American party system—if issue-oriented voting becomes increasingly
important and frequent.
8
Miller, Miller, Raine, and Brown, “A majority Party in Disarray.”
Second, compared with previous presidential voting patterns, there were some
dramatic changes in the way certain major groups in the electorate voted in 1972.
Richard Nixon, a Republican, won more than half of the vote of labor union
members, who had been traditionally Democratic. The President also had a majority
among normally Democratic Catholic voters. And the South, a Democratic bastion for
nearly three generations following the Civil War, was the region where support for
Nixon was the strongest.
The Electoral System
These were startling figures in terms of traditional voting alignments in the United
States. They also raised a larger question. Did Nixon’s victory represent the
emergence of a viable Republican majority at the presidential level? Or was it merely
a response by the voters to short-term issue and other political factors in 1972? The
answer was not clear. Moreover, unexpected events can influence politics. Less than
six month’s after Nixon’s triumph, the Watergate affair had cast a long shadow over
the White House and his presidency.