1976 United States Presidential Election (For All Mankind)

The 1972 United States Presidential Election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Democratic U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts defeated Incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon from California. This election had the highest turnout of any election since 1900 and was the first time in 40 years that an incumbent president was voted out of office (Herbert Hoover in 1932). It was the first time when California had more electoral votes than New York.

Nixon easily swept aside challenges from two Republican congressmen in the 1972 Republican primaries to win re-nomination. Kennedy, who had played a significant role in the Apollo 11 investigation and subsequent hearings, mobilized the Women's movement and other liberal supporters to win his party's nomination. Among the candidates he defeated were early front-runner Edmund Muskie, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey, Senator Goerge McGovern, and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American to run for a major party's presidential nomination.

Nixon emphasized the strong economy, the end of the Vietnam War, and American success in space, while Kennedy ran on a platform calling for a single-payer healthcare system, and attacking Nixon for his failures in space in including failing to land the First Man on the Moon and the failure to land the first woman on the Moon. Kennedy maintained a small lead at the beginning of the race, however, the race became neck and neck in the Fall of 1972. However, Nixon's reelection committee broke into the Watergate complex to wiretap the Democratic National Committee's headquarters, a scandal that would later be known as "Watergate". Nixon would be connected to these break-ins, severely damaging him in the polls.

Kennedy won a decisive victory over Nixon, winning a sizable margin of the Electoral College and the Popular Vote. Kennedy's 54.7% of the popular vote is the highest recorded for a Democratic candidate since 1964.