User:Dlm123/sandbox

The 1972 United States presidential election was the 47th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 7, 1972. Incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota was defeated by Republican Governor Ronald Reagan of California. Until the 1988 election, this was the largest margin of victory in the Electoral College in a U.S. presidential election, and as of 2022, it remains the last time a presidential candidate captured more than 60% of the popular vote. It was also the first presidential election that would see California move ahead of New York in the number of each state's electoral votes, a gap that has since widened.

Humphrey swept aside challenges from several Democratic candidates in the 1972 Democratic primaries to win the nomination. Reagan, who had played a significant role in the New Right after the 1968 election, mobilized the proto Neo-Conservative movement and other former Goldwater supporters to win his party's nomination. Among the candidates he defeated were early front-runner and vice-presidential nominee for 1968 Spiro Agnew, former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, and attorney and anti-ERA advocate Phyllis Schlafly, the first woman to run for a major party's presidential nomination.

Humphrey emphasized the strong economy and his predecessor's success in domestic affairs, while Reagan ran on a platform calling for reduced government, and the return of states rights. Humphrey maintained a large lead in polling until late in the campaign, when Reagan overtook him in the Popular Vote and the Electoral College.

Reagan won the election in a close race, taking 51.0% of the popular vote and carrying just 23 states, while being the first Republican to sweep the Midwest. Humphrey took just 47.2% of the popular vote, while George Wallace of the American Independent Party won 1.0% of the vote. Reagan received almost 3 million more votes than Humphrey and the 1972 presidential election was the first since the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

As of 2022, this was the last time that Minnesota voted for the Republican candidate in a presidential election, the longest such streak for any state. This was also the most recent presidential election in which the entire Midwest was won by a single candidate.