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1976 United States presidential election

The 1976 United States presidential election was the 48th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1976. Democrat Jimmy Carter, former Governor of Georgia, defeated incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford in a narrow victory. This was the first presidential election since 1932 in which the incumbent was defeated, as well as the only Democratic victory of the six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988.


538 members of the Electoral College
270 electoral votes needed to win

54.8%[1] Decrease 1.1 pp

Ford ascended to the presidency when Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which badly damaged the Republican Party and its electoral prospects. Ford promised to continue Nixon's political agenda and govern as a moderate Republican, causing considerable backlash from the conservative wing of his party. This spurred former California governor Ronald Reagan to mount a significant challenge against him in the Republican primaries, in which Ford narrowly prevailed. Carter was unknown outside of his home state of Georgia at the start of the Democratic primaries, but he emerged as the front-runner after his victories in the first set of primaries. Campaigning as a political moderate within his own party and as a Washington outsider, Carter defeated numerous opponents to clinch the Democratic nomination.


Ford pursued a "Rose Garden strategy" in which he sought to portray himself as an experienced leader focused on fulfilling his role as chief executive.[2] On the other hand, Carter emphasized his status as a reformer who was "untainted" by Washington.[3] Saddled with a poor economy, the fall of South Vietnam, and the political fallout from the Watergate Scandal, including his unpopular pardon of Richard Nixon, Ford trailed by a wide margin in polls taken after Carter's formal nomination in July 1976. Ford's polling rebounded after a strong performance in the first presidential debate, and the race was close on election day.


Carter won a majority of the popular and electoral votes. He was able to carry several Midwestern and Northeastern swing states, as well as most states in the Democratic-dominated region of the South. Ford dominated the Western states. Carter's victory at the polls was due in part to the backlash against the Watergate scandal that still was deeply hurting Republican candidates. Ford became the only vice-president to become president and subsequently fail to win election for a term in his own right.


As of 2020, this is also the last election in which the Democratic candidate won the majority of states in the South, carrying the states of Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas (mainly due to Carter's southern roots), and the most recent election in which the losing candidate carried more states than the winning candidate.


Since the death of George McGovern in 2012, this is the earliest election where at least one of the major party nominees for president (Carter) or vice president is still alive. Ford died in 2006 and both Mondale and Dole died in 2021.


This is the only election in which all 4 major presidential and vice presidential candidates would be their party's nominee for president and lose. In addition to Ford losing this election, Carter would lose reelection to Reagan in 1980, Mondale would lose to President Reagan in 1984, and Dole would lose to President Bill Clinton in 1996.

who had gained fame in the 1972 election as a faithless elector, ran as the nominee of the Libertarian Party.

Roger MacBride

a former Democratic Senator from Minnesota, ran as an independent candidate.

Eugene McCarthy

Prohibition Party nominee.

Ben Bubar

former mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, ran as the nominee of Socialist Party USA, which was founded in 1973 in a split with Socialist Party of America.

Frank Zeidler

four-time Communist Party candidate[5]

Gus Hall

the former Democratic Governor of Georgia (and Lieutenant Governor under Carter), ran as the nominee of the American Independent Party

Lester Maddox

Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

Results by congressional district, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

Results by congressional district, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

Presidency of Jimmy Carter

History of the United States (1964–1980)

1976 United States House of Representatives elections

1976 United States Senate elections

1976 United States gubernatorial elections

Inauguration of Jimmy Carter

Chester, Edward W A guide to political platforms (1977)

online

Johnstone, Andrew, and Andrew Priest, eds. US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy: Candidates, Campaigns, and Global Politics from FDR to Bill Clinton (2017) pp 229–249.

online

(1977). We Almost Made It. New York: Crown. ISBN 0-517-52933-5.

MacDougall, Malcolm D.

Roessner, Amber (2020). Jimmy Carter and the Birth of the Marathon Media Campaign. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.  978-0807170793.

ISBN

(2005). Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson. ISBN 0-7852-6049-8.

Shirley, Craig

Williams, Daniel K. The Election of the Evangelical: Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and the Presidential Contest of 1976 (University Press of Kansas, 2020)

online review

The Election Wall's 1976 Election Video Page

1976 popular vote by counties

1976 popular vote by states (with bar graphs)

Campaign commercials from the 1976 election

Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine

Election of 1976 in Counting the Votes