Misplaced Pages

1972 United States presidential election in Florida

← 1968 November 7, 1972 1976 →
Turnout	72%
Nominee Richard Nixon George McGovern Party Republican Democratic Home state California South Dakota Running mate Spiro Agnew Sargent Shriver Electoral vote 17 0 Popular vote 1,857,759 718,117 Percentage 71.91% 27.80%
County ResultsCongressional District Results Nixon  50-60%  60-70%  70-80%  80-90%  90-100%
President before election Richard Nixon Republican Elected President Richard Nixon Republican

Elections in Florida
Federal government Presidential elections 1848 1852 1856 1860 1868 1872 1876 1880 1884 1888 1892 1896 1900 1904 1908 1912 1916 1920 1924 1928 1932 1936 1940 1944 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020 2024 Presidential primaries Democratic 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020 2024 Republican 2008 2012 2016 2020 2024 U.S. Senate elections 1845 1848 1851 1855 1857 1868 1875 1879 1881 1885 1887 1890 1891 1893 sp 1897 1899 1899 sp 1903 1905 sp 1908 1909 sp 1911 1914 1916 1920 1922 1926 1928 1932 1934 1936 sp 1938 1940 1944 1946 1950 1952 1956 1958 1962 1964 1968 1970 1974 1976 1980 1982 1986 1988 1992 1994 1998 2000 2004 2006 2010 2012 2016 2018 2022 2024 2026 sp 2028 U.S. House of Representatives elections 1845 AL sp 1846 1848 1850 1852 1854 1856 1858 1860 1865 1868 1870 1872 1874 1876 1878 1880 1882 1884 1886 1888 1890 1892 1894 1896 1898 1900 1902 1904 1906 1908 1910 1912 1914 1916 1918 1920 1922 1924 1926 1928 1930 1932 1934 1936 1938 1940 1942 1944 1946 1948 1950 1952 1954 1955 6th sp 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1989 18th sp 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2001 1st sp 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 19th sp 2012 2014 13th sp 19th sp 2016 2018 2020 2022 20th sp 2024 2025 1st sp 6th sp C.S. House of Representatives elections 1861 1863 1st sp
State government General elections 2006 2010 2014 2018 2020 2022 2026 Gubernatorial elections 1845 1848 1852 1856 1860 1865 1868 1872 1876 1880 1884 1888 1892 1896 1900 1904 1908 1912 1916 1920 1924 1928 1932 1936 1940 1944 1948 1952 1954 sp 1956 1960 1964 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022 2026 Attorney General elections 1966 1970 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022 2026 Chief Financial Officer elections 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022 2026 Agriculture Commissioner elections 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022 2026 Senate elections 2018 2020 2022 2024 House of Representatives elections 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 Ballot measures 1998 Florida Amendment 8 2008 Florida Amendment 2 2014 Florida Amendment 2 2016 Florida Amendment 1 2016 Florida Amendment 2 2018 Florida Amendment 4 2020 Florida Amendment 1 2020 Florida Amendment 2 2020 Florida Amendment 3 2020 Florida Amendment 4 2020 Florida Amendment 5 2022 Florida Amendment 1 2022 Florida Amendment 2 2022 Florida Amendment 3 2024 Florida Amendment 3 2024 Florida Amendment 4
Jacksonville Mayoral elections 2003 2007 2011 2015 2019 2023 Sheriff elections 2022 sp
Miami Mayoral elections 1997 2001 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021 2025
Miami-Dade County Mayoral elections 1996 2008 2011 (recall) 2011 sp 2012 2016 2020 2024
Orlando Mayoral elections 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2003 sp 2004 2008 2012 2015 2019 2023
St. Petersburg Mayoral elections 2001 2005 2009 2013 2017 2021
Tallahassee Mayoral elections 1997 2003 sp 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022
Tampa Mayoral elections 2003 2007 2011 2015 2019 2023
Other localities Fort Lauderdale 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015 2018 2020 Gainesville 2016 2019 2022 Hialeah 2011 Miami Beach 2011 2013 2015 North Miami 2013 2014 sp 2017 2021 Orange County 2010 2022 Pensacola 2022
Government
v t e

The 1972 United States presidential election in Florida was held on November 7, 1972, as part of the concurrent United States presidential election. Florida voters chose seventeen electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. Incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon won the state over the Democratic nominee, South Dakota Senator George McGovern, by a landslide margin of 44.11% and over one million votes.

After having been among the strongest parts of the Democratic "Solid South" between 1892 and 1944 – except when vehement anti-Catholicism in the Panhandle and urban Republican support gave the state's electoral votes to Herbert Hoover in 1928 – Florida turned into a Republican-leaning state at the presidential level from 1948 due to the growth of a strongly business-oriented society in, and influx of conservative Northern retirees to, newly-developed South Florida following World War II. Aided by this vote, the Republicans carried Florida in all three presidential elections from 1952 to 1960, though North Florida remained Democratic-leaning.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a dramatic change in the next two elections. The classically Deep Southern north of the state, affected by turmoil over school and university desegregation, went powerfully to the staunchly conservative Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 and then to the segregationist third-party candidacy of George Wallace in 1968. The southern urban areas that had supported the Republicans between 1948 and 1960, meanwhile, contained huge numbers of former Northern retirees hostile to Goldwater's proposed privatization of Social Security, and turned first to Lyndon Johnson before Nixon recaptured most of them for the Republicans in 1968.

The 1972 Democratic presidential primary in Florida saw Wallace easily carry the state (including every county but highly urbanized Dade) in a ballot that also featured a referendum on court-ordered busing, in which more than three-fourths of voters supported a constitutional ban on the practice. McGovern and John Lindsay were supporters of busing who accused even their rivals Hubert Humphrey and Henry M. Jackson of being covert racists for their opposition thereto, while Wallace openly campaigned against it. Wallace, the opponent most feared by Nixon, was paralyzed by an attempted assassination in May, and McGovern won the nomination from powerful support in the Midwestern and Pacific states. Once McGovern won the nomination, he offered Florida Governor Reubin Askew the vice-presidential slot, but Askew turned the position down.

As of 2024, this is the last election in which Gadsden County voted for a Republican presidential candidate, and the only election in which a Republican won all of the state's counties. 78% of white voters supported Nixon while 22% supported McGovern.

Primary elections

Democratic

George Wallace would win a plurality of the Democratic Primary vote in all of the counties in the state.

Republican

Richard Nixon would end up winning a majority of the vote in all counties except for Desoto County.

Results

Results by county

Counties that flipped from American Independent to Republican

• Baker
• Bay
• Bradford
• Calhoun
• Clay
• Columbia
• Dixie
• Desoto
• Duval
• Escambia
• Flagler
• Franklin
• Gilchrist
• Glades
• Gadsden
• Gulf
• Hamilton
• Hendry
• Hernando
• Hardee
• Holmes
• Jackson
• Jefferson
• Lafayette
• Leon
• Levy
• Liberty
• Madison
• Marion
• Nassau
• Okaloosa
• Okeechobee
• Putnam
• Polk
• St. Johns
• Santa Rosa
• Sumter
• Suwannee
• Taylor
• Union
• Walton
• Washington
• Wakulla

Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican

• Alachua
• Dade
• Monroe

Results by congressional district

This is a table of the results by congressional district for the general election. Nixon won the majority of the vote in all of the congressional districts. The source cited does not include the results for third parties in that year.

Analysis

Incumbent President Nixon overwhelmingly won the state of Florida with 71.91% of the vote, carrying all of Florida's 67 counties (the last time any presidential candidate has won every single county in the state) and seventeen electoral votes. This made Florida about 21% more Republican than the nation-at-large. Nixon's victory in Florida made it his fifth strongest state after Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma and Alabama. McGovern reached 40% of the vote only in Dade County with its substantial Jewish and Latin populations, plus Alachua County with its large population of liberal college students who were a major base for his candidacy – and the Democratic candidate only reached thirty percent of the vote in four other counties. Nixon's message enabled him to capture virtually all of the Wallace vote from 1968, as shown by the fact that pineywoods Holmes County, which had been Wallace's fifth-strongest county in 1968, was to be Nixon's fourth-best county in 1972 with over 92% of the vote.

In addition to hostility towards busing and the "acid, amnesty and abortion" policies which Nixon consistently accused McGovern of despite eventual running mate Sargent Shriver being firmly opposed to abortion, the Democratic campaign in Florida was also crippled by McGovern's policy of normalizing relationships with Fidel Castro's Cuba. Relationships with Cuba were a hotbed issue in the most liberal and least Southern region of the state around Miami, and drove even many voters who had supported Humphrey in 1968 to Nixon and the Republican Party. This allowed the GOP to carry Monroe County, which had consistently voted Democratic since 1888.

References

1. See Doherty, Herbert J. (junior); 'Liberal and Conservative Politics in Florida'; The Journal of Politics, nol. 14, no. 3 (August 1952), pp. 403-417
2. Strong, Donald S.; 'The Presidential Election in the South, 1952'; The Journal of Politics, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 343-389
3. Encyclopedia of African American History: 5-Volume Set, p. 228 ISBN 0195167791
4. Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 224 ISBN 9780691163246
5. Lassiter, Matthew D.; The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South, pp. 310-311 ISBN 140084942X
6. ^ Small, Melvin; A Companion to Richard M. Nixon, chapter 9 ISBN 144434093X
7. Young, Josh; And Give Up Showbiz?: How Fred Levin Beat Big Tobacco, Avoided Two Murder Prosecutions, Became a Chief of Ghana, Earned Boxing Manager of the Year, and Transformed American Law, p. 183 ISBN 1940363411
8. Sullivan, Robert David; ‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016
9. Black & Black 1992, p. 295.
10. Black & Black 1992, p. 335.
11. "Our Campaigns - FL US President - D Primary Race - Mar 14, 1972". www.ourcampaigns.com. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
12. "Our Campaigns - FL US President - D Primary Race - Mar 14, 1972". www.ourcampaigns.com. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
13. "Our Campaigns - FL US President - R Primary Race - Mar 14, 1972". www.ourcampaigns.com. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
14. "Our Campaigns - FL US President - R Primary Race - Mar 14, 1972". www.ourcampaigns.com. Retrieved July 30, 2021.
15. ^ "1972 United States Presidential Election, Results by Congressional District". Western Washington University. Retrieved July 9, 2024.
16. "1972 Presidential General Election Results – Florida". Retrieved April 25, 2016.
17. "1972 Presidential Election Statistics". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved March 5, 2018.
18. ^ Rae, Nicol C.; Southern Democrats, pp. 48-49 ISBN 0198024770
19. Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas; 1968 Presidential Election Statistics
20. Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas; 1972 Presidential Election Statistics
21. Robertson, Andrew; Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History, p. 195 ISBN 0872893200
22. Adams, Florence P. and Rodriguez David; Latinos and Local Representation: Changing Realities, Emerging Theories, p. 56 ISBN 0815333706
23. Menendez, Albert J.; The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004, p. 164-165 ISBN 0786422173

Works cited

• Black, Earl; Black, Merle (1992). The Vital South: How Presidents Are Elected. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674941306.

v t e State and district results of the 1972 United States presidential election
Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

• 1972 Florida elections
• United States presidential elections in Florida
• 1972 United States presidential election by state