1972 United States presidential election (Nixon's Nightmare)

The 1972 United States presidential election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota defeated incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon. This was the first time an incumbent president lost re-election since Herbert Hoover was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election.

Nixon swept aside challenges from two Republican congressmen in the 1972 Republican primaries to win renomination. McGovern, who had played a significant role in changing the Democratic nomination system after the 1968 election, mobilized the anti–Vietnam War 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, and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first African American person to run for a major party's presidential nomination.

Nixon emphasized the strong economy and his success in foreign affairs, while McGovern ran on a platform calling for an immediate end to the Vietnam War, universial healthcare, and the institution of a guaranteed minimum income. Nixon maintained a large, and consistent, lead in polling. Separately, 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". McGovern's campaign was considered "dead in the water" until he successfully lobbied Ted Kennedy to be his running mate, McGovern had been polling badly in every poll in which Kennedy was not placed as the vice presidential nominee. This led McGovern to work heavily to Kennedy to accept the nomination. Kennedy, originally, had no plans to accept the nomination, but it was McGovern's promise to enact the Health Security Act that pushed Kennedy into accepting the nomination.