1972 Presidential Election Essay Research Paper The — страница 4

beginning of the 60’s and into the 70’s. The growth of ticket splitting in the South and the decrease in Democratic Party identifiers in the South along with an increase in democratic support in the Northeast may be seen as a possible realignment for each of those two regions. The increasing loss of democratic support in the South may be another reason that led to the landslide victory by Nixon. Senator George McGovern went in to the year of 1972 with a chance of winning the presidency of the United States. However, with a divided Democratic Party early in the campaign, McGovern went into the general election with a handicap. Whether or not the division of support from the democratic effected McGovern’s chance to win the election can be argued, but no one will disagree that

having the full support of his party would have hurt his chances. The failure of McGovern to turn potential supporters into actual supporters may have been his largest mistake. With a large portion of the electorate sharing similar views, McGovern should have been able to do somewhat better in the general election. A possible change in the mood of the South towards conservatism may have prevented McGovern from having any chance of winning being as liberal as he was presented to be. Whether McGovern ran a poor campaign, or was too liberal, one thing is for sure President Nixon received one of the most impressive vote totals in the history of the United States. 6a3 Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. Packaging the Presidency. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Ladd, Everett Carll Jr.

and Seymour Martin Lipset. Academics, Politics, and the 1972 Presidential Election. Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1973. Ladd, Everett Carll Jr. with Charles D. Hadley. Transformations of the American Party System. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1975. Miller, Warren E. and Teresa E. Levitin. Leadership & Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop Publishers, Inc., 1976. Page, Benjamin I. Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Presidential Elections: 1972 Electoral Votes. On-Line. Internet. 15 Nov. Available WWW: http://www.multied.com/elections/1972elec.html