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The United States presidential election of 1976 followed the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It pitted incumbent President Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate, against the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate. Ford was saddled with a slow economy and paid a political price for his pardon of Nixon. Carter ran as a Washington "outsider" and reformer and won a narrow victory. He was the first president elected from the Deep South since Zachary Taylor in 1848. Eugene McCarthy, a former Democratic Senator from Minnesota, ran as an independent candidate.
[edit] Nominations[edit] Democratic PartyDemocratic candidates
[edit] Candidates gallery
The surprise winner of the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination was Jimmy Carter, a former state senator and governor of Georgia. When the primaries began Carter was relatively unknown at the national level, and many political pundits regarded a number of better-known candidates, such as Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington, Governor George Wallace of Alabama, and California Governor Jerry Brown, as the favorites for the nomination. However, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Carter realized that his status as a Washington "outsider", political centrist, and moderate reformer could give him an advantage over his better-known "establishment" rivals. Carter also took advantage of the record number of state primaries and caucuses in 1976 to eliminate his better-known rivals one-by-one. By June 1976 he had captured more than enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination. At the 1976 Democratic National Convention Carter easily won the nomination on the first ballot; he then chose Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, a liberal and political protégé of Hubert Humphrey, as his running mate. [edit] Republican PartyRepublican candidates
[edit] Candidates gallery
 The contest for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1976 was between two serious candidates: Gerald Ford, the leader of the GOP's moderate wing and the incumbent President, from Michigan; and Ronald Reagan, the leader of the GOP's conservative wing and the former two-term governor of California. The primary contest between the two men was hard-fought and relatively even; by the start of the Republican Convention in August 1976 the race for the nomination was still too close to call. Ford defeated Reagan by a narrow margin on the first ballot at the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, and chose Senator Robert Dole of Kansas as his running mate. [edit] General election[edit] Fall campaign One of the advantages Ford held over Carter as the general election campaign began was that, as President, he was privileged to preside over events dealing with the United States Bicentennial; this often resulted in favorable publicity for Ford. The Washington, D.C. fireworks display on the Fourth of July was presided over by the President and televised nationally.[1] On July 7, 1976, the President and First Lady served as hosts at a White House state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of the United Kingdom, which was televised on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network. These events were part of Ford's "Rose Garden" strategy to win the election; instead of appearing as a typical politician, Ford presented himself as a "tested leader" who was busily fulfilling the role of national leader and Chief Executive. Not until October did Ford leave the White House to actively campaign across the nation. Jimmy Carter ran as a reformer who was "untainted" by Washington political scandals,[citation needed] which many voters found attractive in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which had led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. Ford, although personally unconnected with Watergate, was seen by many as too close to the discredited Nixon administration, especially after Ford granted Nixon a presidential pardon for any crimes he may have committed during his term of office. Ford's pardon of Nixon caused his popularity, as measured by public-opinion polls, to plummet. Ford's refusal to publicly explain his reasons for pardoning Nixon (he would do so in his memoirs several years later), also hurt his image. His son, Jack Ford, gave an interview in 1976 in which he stated that his father felt that he "(doesn't) have to prove anything" regarding the pardon of Nixon, and thus did not feel compelled to talk about it.[2] Ford unsuccessfully asked Congress to end the 1950s-era price controls on natural gas, which caused a dwindling of American natural gas reserves after the 1973 Oil Crisis.[3] Carter stated during his campaign that he opposed the ending of the price controls and thought such a move would be "disastrous."[3] After the Democratic National Convention, Carter held a huge 33-point lead over Ford in the polls. However, as the campaign continued, the race greatly tightened. The closeness of the race is normally attributed to three causes. Most importantly, Carter confirmed a promise of a full pardon to Christian and other religious and political refugees and other opponents to the Vietnam War (Ford had issued only a conditional amnesty) draft dodgers in response to a question posed by a reporter during the presidential debates, a promise which froze Ford's poll numbers in Ohio, Wisconsin, Hawaii, and Mississippi (Ford needed to convert only 11,000 votes in any two of those four states in order to win). Americans viewed the pardon as the only true way to end the bitterly hated Vietnam War. Earlier, Playboy magazine had published a controversial interview with Carter; in the interview, Carter admitted to having "lusted in his heart" for women other than his wife, which cut into his support among women and evangelical Christians. Also, on September 24, Ford performed well in what was the first televised presidential debate since 1960. Polls taken after the debate showed that most viewers felt that Ford was the winner. Carter was also hurt by Ford's charges that he lacked the necessary experience to be an effective national leader, and that Carter was vague on many issues. Carter pledged to end desegregation busing.[4]  However, Ford also committed a costly blunder in the campaign that halted his momentum. During the second presidential debate on October 6, Ford stumbled when he asserted that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration." He added that he did not "believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union," and made the same claim with regards to Yugoslavia and Romania.[5] Ford refused to retract his statement for almost a week after the debate. Neo-conservatives, who were becoming increasingly anti-Soviet, were appalled. Combined with Carter's pledge of a pardon for all Vietnam War opponents and refugees, Ford's surge stalled and Carter was able to maintain a slight lead in the polls. A vice-presidential debate between Robert Dole and Walter Mondale also hurt the Republican ticket when Dole asserted that military unpreparedness on the part of Democratic presidents was responsible for all of the wars the U.S. had fought in the twentieth century. Dole, a World War II veteran, noted that in every twentieth-century war from World War I to the Vietnam War, a Democrat had been President. Dole then pointed out that the number of U.S. casualties in "Democrat wars" was roughly equal to the population of Detroit. Many voters felt that Dole's criticism was unfairly harsh and that his dispassionate delivery made him seem cold. One factor which did help Ford in the closing days of the campaign was a series of popular television appearances he did with Joe Garagiola, Sr., a retired baseball star for the St. Louis Cardinals and a well-known announcer for NBC Sports. Garagiola and Ford appeared in a number of shows in several large cities. During the show Garagiola would ask Ford questions about his life and beliefs; the shows were so informal, relaxed, and laid-back that some television critics labelled them the "Joe and Jerry Show." Ford and Garagiola obviously enjoyed one another's company, and they remained friends after the election was over. [edit] Results Despite his campaign's blunders, Ford managed to close the remaining gap in the polls and by election day the race was judged to be even. Election day was November 2, and it took most of that night and the following morning to determine the winner. It wasn't until 3:30 am (EST), that the NBC television network was able to pronounce that Carter had carried Mississippi, and had thus accumulated more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win (seconds later, ABC News also declared Carter the winner based on projections for Carter in Wisconsin and Hawaii; CBS News announced Carter's victory at 3:45 am).[6] Carter defeated Ford by two percentage points in the national popular vote.  The electoral vote was the closest since 1916; Carter took 23 states with 297 electoral votes, while Ford won 27 states and 240 electoral votes (one elector from Washington state, pledged to Ford, voted for Reagan). Carter's victory came primarily from his near-sweep of the South (he lost only Virginia), and his narrow victories in large Northern states such as New York, and Pennsylvania. Ford did well in the West, carrying every state except Hawaii. The states that ultimately decided the election were Wisconsin (1.68% margin) and Ohio (.27% margin), both won by Carter. Had Ford won these states and all other states he carried, he would have won the presidency. Carter was the first Democrat since John F. Kennedy in 1960 to carry the states of the Deep South, and the first since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to carry an unquestionable majority of southern states. Carter performed very strongly in his home state of Georgia, carrying 66.7% of the vote and every county in the state. His 50.1% of the vote was only the second time since 1964 that a Democrat managed to obtain a majority of the popular vote in a presidential election until Barack Obama won about 53% of the vote 32 years later. Carter is just one of five Democrats to gain a majority of the popular vote since the Civil War, with the others being Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Samuel Tilden, and Barack Obama. Tilden, although winning the popular vote, was declared to have lost the electoral college vote to Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 as part of a political deal with Southern Democrats to end Reconstruction.  Had Ford won the election, the provisions of the 22nd amendment would have disqualified him from running in 1980, because he had served more than two years of Nixon's remaining term. [edit] StatisticsSource (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1976 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (August 7, 2005). Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (August 7, 2005). (a) Mike Padden, a Republican faithless elector from Washington, gave Ronald Reagan one electoral vote. [edit] Close statesStates where margin of victory was under 5%
[edit] Voter demographics
Source: CBS News/ New York Times interviews with 12,782 voters as they left the polls, as reported in the New York Times, November 9, 1980, p. 28, and in further analysis. The 1976 data are from CBS News interviews.
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