1972 United States Presidential Election (President Wallace)

The 1972 United States Presidential Election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Incumbent Constitution President George Wallace won a landslide re-election to a second term. Until the 1984 election, this was the largest margin of victory in a popular vote ever, and one of the largest Electoral Collage victories in history.

Wallace easily swept aside challenges in the primaries, winning re-nomination. The new Progressive Party chose McGovern, while selecting 1968 GOP Nominee Nelson Rockefeller as his running mate. In the general election, Wallace crushed McGovern, winning over 500 electoral votes and 94% of all states. McGovern carried a bare three states plus Washington, DC.

Wallace's victory was mainly attributed to his success in ending the Vietnam War by escalating it dramatically, capturing Hanoi by 1971, as well as the economy's rapid growth and the falling inflation rate.

Primaries
With the popularity of President Wallace, it seemed essentially certain that he and Vice President LeMay would be re-nominated by the party. The only truly serious challenger was Congressman John M. Ashbrook. However, Ashbrook was not well-known, and had virtually zero chance of unseating Wallace. In the end, Wallace crushed Ashbrook, with the latter not winning a single contest.

Despite some pressure from party leaders that Wallace select a different running mate than incumbent Vice President Curtis LeMay, Wallace rejected these demands and stuck with LeMay. On May 15, 1972, while campaigning for re-nomination, Wallace was shot at by Arthur Bremer. Most of Bremer's bullets missed the President, with one striking him in his abdomen. Bremer was shot and killed by a Secret Service agent.

The shooting made Wallace even more sympathetic in the public, boosting his popularity. At the convention in Miami, Wallace was renominated together with Vice President LeMay. At his acceptance speech, Wallace attacked the Progressive Party as "hippies and socialists", and LeMay gave a similarly hell-raising speech where he compared McGovern and "his ilk" to the Soviet Union.

Primaries
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Campaign
McGovern had originally intended to run on a platform of immediately ending the Vietnam War, but the war's conclusion in 1971 left him with little to campaign on. He did, however, significantly campaign on creating a sort of guaranteed income for the poor. His campaign was harmed by his perception by the public as too radical, even compared with someone like Wallace. McGovern's attempts to portray Wallace as a radical right-wing extremist (even sometimes foolishly drawing comparisons to European fascists) backfired tremendously, as Wallace's team hammered McGovern for his left-wing views, including what some commentators labeled as a conciliatory tone towards the Soviet Union.