1976 United States presidential election

The 1976 United States presidential election was the 48th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1976. Democrat Jimmy Carter of Georgia defeated incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford from Michigan. Carter's win represented the lone Democratic victory in a period of Republican dominance at the presidential level; he was the first Democrat to win a presidential election since 1964 and the last until 1992.

1976 United States presidential election

November 2, 1976

538 members of the Electoral College
270 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout53.5%[1] 1.7 pp
 
Nominee Jimmy Carter Gerald Ford
Party Democratic Republican
Home state Georgia Michigan
Running mate Walter Mondale Bob Dole
Electoral vote 297 240[2]
States carried 23 + DC 27
Popular vote 40,831,881 39,148,634
Percentage 50.1% 48.0%

Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Carter/Mondale and red denotes those won by Ford/Dole. Pink is the electoral vote for Ronald Reagan by a Washington faithless elector. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes cast by each state and the District of Columbia.

President before election

Gerald Ford
Republican

Elected President

Jimmy Carter
Democratic

President Richard Nixon had won the 1972 election with Spiro Agnew as his running mate, but in 1973 Agnew resigned and Ford was appointed as vice president via the 25th Amendment. When Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Ford ascended to the presidency, becoming the first president to take office without having been elected as either president or vice president. He faced a strong challenge from conservative former governor and future president Ronald Reagan of California in the Republican primaries, but Ford narrowly prevailed at the convention. Carter was little-known at the start of the Democratic primaries, but the former governor of Georgia emerged as the front-runner after his victories in the first set of primaries. Campaigning as a political moderate and Washington outsider, Carter defeated opponents such as Jerry Brown and Mo Udall 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. Carter emphasized his status as a reformer who was "untainted" by Washington. Saddled with a poor economy, the fall of South Vietnam and his unpopular pardon of 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 vote. He carried every state in the South except Virginia, while Ford dominated the Western states. Carter remains the only Democratic candidate since 1964 to win a majority of the Southern states. Ford won 27 states, the most states ever carried by a losing candidate. Both of the major party vice-presidential nominees, Walter Mondale in 1984 and Bob Dole in 1996, would later win their respective party's presidential nominations, but lose in the general election.

As of 2020, this was the last time that Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas voted for the Democratic candidate in a presidential election, as well as the last election where the winning candidate did not win a majority of the 51 jurisdictions (the 50 states plus the District of Columbia). However, it was not the last time a candidate won the popular vote without winning the majority of states. Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 both won the popular vote but did not carry the electoral vote.

Nominations

Democratic Party

Democratic candidates

Democratic Party (United States)
1976 Democratic Party ticket
Jimmy Carter Walter Mondale
for President for Vice President
76th
Governor of Georgia
(1971–1975)
U.S. senator
from Minnesota
(1964–1976)
Campaign

The surprise winner of the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination was Jimmy Carter, a former state senator and governor of Georgia. When the primaries began, Carter was little-known at the national level, and many political pundits regarded a number of better-known candidates, such as Senator Henry M. Jackson from Washington, Representative Morris Udall from Arizona, Governor George Wallace of Alabama, and California Governor Jerry Brown, as the favorites for the nomination. However, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Carter realized that his status as a Washington outsider, political centrist, and moderate reformer could give him an advantage over his better-known establishment rivals. Carter also took advantage of the record number of state primaries and caucuses in 1976 to eliminate his better-known rivals one-by-one.

Senator Jackson made a fateful decision not to compete in the early Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, which Jimmy Carter won after liberals split their votes among four other candidates. Though Jackson went on to win the Massachusetts and New York primaries, he was forced to quit the race on May 1 after losing the critical Pennsylvania primary to Carter by twelve percentage points. Carter then defeated Governor Wallace, his main conservative challenger, by a wide margin in the North Carolina primary, thus forcing Wallace to end his campaign. Representative Udall, a liberal, then became Carter's main challenger. He finished second to Carter in the New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New York, Michigan, South Dakota, and Ohio primaries, and won the caucuses in his home state of Arizona, while running even with Carter in the New Mexico caucuses. However, the fact that Udall finished second to Carter in most of these races meant that Carter steadily accumulated more delegates for the nomination than he did.

As Carter closed in on the nomination, an "ABC" (Anybody But Carter) movement started among Northern and Western liberal Democrats who worried that Carter's Southern upbringing would make him too conservative for the Democratic Party. The leaders of the "ABC" movement – Idaho Senator Frank Church and California Governor Jerry Brown – both announced their candidacies for the Democratic nomination and defeated Carter in several late primaries. However, their campaigns started too late to prevent Carter from gathering the remaining delegates he needed to capture the nomination.

By June 1976, Carter had captured more than enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination. At the 1976 Democratic National Convention, Carter easily won the nomination on the first ballot; Udall finished in second place. Carter then chose Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, a liberal and political protégé of Hubert Humphrey, as his running mate.

Republican Party

Republican candidates

First ballot vote for the presidential nomination by state delegations
Republican Party (United States)
1976 Republican Party ticket
Gerald Ford Bob Dole
for President for Vice President
38th
President of the United States
(1974–1977)
U.S. senator
from Kansas
(1969–1996)
Campaign
The 1976 Republican National Convention at Kemper Arena in Kansas City. Vice Presidential nominee Bob Dole is on the far left, then Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan is at the center shaking hands with President Gerald Ford, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller is just to the right of Ford, followed by Susan Ford and First Lady Betty Ford.

The contest for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 1976 was between two serious candidates: incumbent president Gerald Ford from Michigan, a member of the party's moderate wing, and former governor of California, Ronald Reagan, a member of the party's conservative wing. The presidential primary campaign between the two men was hard-fought and relatively even; by the start of the Republican Convention in August 1976, the race for the nomination was still too close to call. Ford defeated Reagan by a narrow margin on the first ballot at the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, and chose Senator Bob Dole from Kansas as his running mate in place of incumbent Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, who had announced the previous year that he was not interested in being considered for the Vice Presidential nomination.[3] Since Rockefeller was the second vice president to assume the office as ruled by the Section 2 of the 25th Amendment and the other one who achieved this feat was Ford who was nominated in 1976, this made Rockefeller the only vice president never contested in the general election both as presidential and vice presidential nominee. All presidents had contested for the office, either as president or vice president, with the exception of Ford who appeared only after being president and all other vice presidents other than Ford had contested for the office. The 1976 Republican Convention was the last political convention to open with the presidential nomination still being undecided until the actual balloting at the convention.

Others

General election

Fall campaign

Carter and Ford in debate

One of the advantages Ford held over Carter as the general election campaign began was that as president he was privileged to preside over events dealing with the United States Bicentennial; this often resulted in favorable publicity for Ford. The Washington, D.C., fireworks display on the Fourth of July was presided over by the president and televised nationally.[5] On July 7, 1976, the President and First Lady served as hosts at a White House state dinner for Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of the United Kingdom, which was televised on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network. These events were part of Ford's "Rose Garden" strategy to win the election, meaning that instead of appearing as a typical politician, Ford presented himself as a "tested leader" who was busily fulfilling the role of national leader and chief executive. Not until October did Ford leave the White House to campaign actively across the nation.

Jimmy Carter ran as a reformer who was "untainted" by Washington political scandals,[6] which many voters found attractive in the wake of the Watergate scandal that had led to President Richard Nixon's resignation. Ford, although personally unconnected with Watergate, was seen by many as too close to the discredited Nixon administration, especially after he granted Nixon a presidential pardon for any crimes he might have committed during his term of office. Ford's pardon of Nixon caused his popularity, as measured by public-opinion polls, to plummet. Ford's refusal to explain his reasons for pardoning Nixon publicly (he would do so in his memoirs several years later), also hurt his image.

Ford unsuccessfully asked Congress to end the 1950s-era price controls on natural gas, which caused a dwindling of American natural gas reserves after the 1973 Oil Crisis.[7] Carter stated during his campaign that he opposed the ending of the price controls and thought such a move would be "disastrous".[8]

After the Democratic National Convention, Carter held a 33-point lead over Ford in the polls.[9] However, as the campaign continued, the race greatly tightened. During the campaign Playboy magazine published a controversial interview with Carter; in the interview, Carter admitted to having "lusted in my heart" for women other than his wife and used the word "screw," which cut into his support among women and evangelical Christians.[10] On September 23, Ford performed well in what was the first televised presidential debate since 1960. Polls taken after the debate showed that most viewers felt that Ford was the winner. Carter was also hurt by Ford's charges that he lacked the necessary experience to be an effective national leader, and that Carter was vague on many issues.

Carter campaign headquarters

However, Ford also committed a costly blunder in the campaign that halted his momentum. During the second presidential debate on October 6, in a response to Max Frankel, Ford stumbled when he asserted that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration". He added that he did not "believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union" and made the same claim with regard to Yugoslavia and Romania (Yugoslavia was not a Warsaw Pact member).[11] Ford refused to retract his statement for almost a week after the debate; as a result his surge in the polls stalled and Carter was able to maintain a slight lead in the polls.

A vice-presidential debate, the first ever formal one of its kind,[12] between Bob Dole and Walter Mondale also hurt the Republican ticket when Dole asserted that military unpreparedness on the part of Democratic presidents was responsible for all of the wars the U.S. had fought in the 20th century. Dole, a World War II veteran, noted that in every 20th-century war from World War I to the Vietnam War, a Democrat had been president. Dole then pointed out that the number of U.S. casualties in "Democrat wars" was roughly equal to the population of Detroit. Many voters felt that Dole's criticism was unfairly harsh and that his dispassionate delivery made him seem cold. Years later, Dole would remark that he regretted the comment, having viewed it as hurting the Republican ticket.[13] One factor which did help Ford in the closing days of the campaign was a series of popular television appearances he did with Joe Garagiola Sr., a retired baseball star for the St. Louis Cardinals and a well-known announcer for NBC Sports. Garagiola and Ford appeared in a number of shows in several large cities. During the show Garagiola would ask Ford questions about his life and beliefs; the shows were so informal, relaxed, and laid-back that some television critics labelled them the "Joe and Jerry Show". Ford and Garagiola obviously enjoyed one another's company, and they remained friends after the election was over.

Presidential debates

There were three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate during the 1976 general election.[14][15]

Debates among candidates for the 1976 U.S. presidential election
No. Date Host City Moderator Panelists Participants Viewership
(Millions)
P1 Thursday, September 23, 1976 Walnut Street Theatre Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Edwin Newman Elizabeth Drew
James P. Gannon
Frank Reynolds
Governor Jimmy Carter
President Gerald Ford
69.7[14]
P2 Wednesday, October 6, 1976 Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco, California Pauline Frederick Max Frankel
Henry Trewhitt
Richard Valeriani
Governor Jimmy Carter
President Gerald Ford
63.9[14]
VP Friday, October 15, 1976 Alley Theatre Houston, Texas James Hoge Marilyn Berger
Hal Bruno
Walter Mears
Senator Bob Dole
Senator Walter Mondale
43.2[14]
P3 Friday, October 22, 1976 Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall[16] Williamsburg, Virginia Barbara Walters Joseph Kraft
Robert Maynard
Jack Nelson
Governor Jimmy Carter
President Gerald Ford
62.7[14]

Results

Election results by county.
Results by congressional district.

Despite his campaign's blunders, Ford managed to close the remaining gap in the polls and by election day, the race was judged to be even. It took most of that night and the following morning to determine the winner. It was not until 3:30 am (EST), that the NBC television network was able to declare that Carter had carried Mississippi and had thus accumulated more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win (seconds later, ABC News also declared Carter the winner based on projections for Carter in Wisconsin and Hawaii while CBS News announced Carter's victory at 3:45 am).[17] Carter defeated Ford by two percentage points in the national popular vote.

The electoral vote was the closest since 1916; Carter carried 23 states with 297 electoral votes, while Ford won 27 states with 240 electoral votes (one elector from Washington state, pledged to Ford, voted for Reagan). Carter's victory came primarily from his near-sweep of the South (he lost only Virginia and Oklahoma) and his narrow victories in large Northern states, such as New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Ford did well in the West, carrying every state in that region except for Hawaii. The most tightly contested state in the election was Oregon; Ford won that state by under 2,000 votes.

A switch of 3,687 votes in Hawaii and 5,559 votes in Ohio, or 144,384 votes from New York from Carter to Ford would have triggered the first contingent election since 1825, as Ford would have received 269 electoral votes and Carter would have received 268, or 282 for Ford and 256 for Carter.[18] By percentage of the vote, the states that secured Carter's victory were Wisconsin (1.68% margin) and Ohio (.27% margin). Had Ford won these states and all other states he carried, he would have won the presidency. The 27 states he won were and still are the most states ever carried by a losing candidate for president. Had Ford won the election, the provisions of the 22nd amendment would have disqualified him from running in 1980, as he served more than two years of Nixon's second term.

Carter was the first Democrat since John F. Kennedy in 1960 to carry the states of the Deep South (Bill Clinton is the only Democrat since 1976 to carry more than one state from the Deep South, doing so in both 1992 and 1996) and the first since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 to carry a majority of all southern states. Carter performed very strongly in his home state of Georgia, carrying 66.7% of the vote and every county in the state. His winning of 23 states was only the first time since the 1960 election and the second time in history that the winner of the election won fewer than half the states. His 50.1% of the vote was the only time since 1964 that a Democrat managed to obtain an absolute majority of the popular vote in a presidential election until Barack Obama won 52.9% of the vote in 2008. Carter is one of six Democrats since the American Civil War to obtain an absolute majority of the popular vote, the others being Samuel J. Tilden, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

This election represents the last time to date that Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, or South Carolina would vote Democratic, and the last time North Carolina would vote Democratic until 2008, as well as the last time Florida voted Democratic until 1996, the last time Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee voted Democratic until 1992. It is also the last time in which Shasta, Yuba, Placer, El Dorado and Madera Counties in California, Adams and Brown in Ohio, Brazoria, Williamson and McLennan Counties in Texas, Madison County in Alabama, Duval and Brevard Counties in Florida, Warren County, Kentucky and St. Mary's County, Maryland would vote Democratic. Cobb and Gwinnett Counties in Georgia would never again vote Democratic until 2016.[19] This election was the last time that a Democrat won the presidency without winning California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.

It was the first time in exactly 100 years (since 1876) when Florida and Virginia supported different candidates. This would happen again in 1996, 2016 and 2020. It was also the first time since Oklahoma statehood in 1907 when the Sooner State and Tennessee supported different candidates, an occurrence replicated only in 1992 and 1996.

Statistics

Electoral results
Presidential candidate Party Home state Popular vote Electoral
vote
Running mate
Count Percentage Vice-presidential candidate Home state Electoral vote
James Earl Carter Jr. Democratic Georgia 40,831,881 50.08% 297 Walter Frederick Mondale Minnesota 297
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (Incumbent) Republican Michigan 39,148,634 48.02% 240 Robert Joseph Dole Kansas 241
Ronald Wilson Reagan Republican California [lower-alpha 1] [lower-alpha 1] 1
Eugene McCarthy None Minnesota 740,460 0.91% 0 [lower-alpha 2] [lower-alpha 2] 0
Roger MacBride Libertarian Virginia 172,557 0.21% 0 David Bergland California 0
Lester Maddox American Independent Georgia 170,274 0.21% 0 William Dyke Wisconsin 0
Thomas J. Anderson American [lower-alpha 3] 158,271 0.19% 0 Rufus Shackelford Florida 0
Peter Camejo Socialist Workers California 90,986 0.11% 0 Willie Mae Reid Illinois 0
Gus Hall Communist New York 58,709 0.07% 0 Jarvis Tyner New York 0
Margaret Wright People's California 49,013 0.06% 0 Benjamin Spock Connecticut 0
Lyndon LaRouche U.S. Labor New York 40,043 0.05% 0 R. Wayne Evans Michigan 0
Other 70,785 0.08% Other
Total 81,531,584 100% 538 538
Needed to win 270 270

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. "1976 Presidential Election Results". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved August 7, 2005.

Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved August 7, 2005.

Popular vote
Carter
50.08%
Ford
48.02%
McCarthy
0.91%
Others
0.57%
Electoral vote
Carter
55.20%
Ford
44.61%
Reagan
0.19%

Results by state

[20]

This election represents the second time that the winning candidate has received a majority of the electoral votes, although the second-place candidate carried a majority of the states. It had previously happened in the 1960 election. The "margin" column shows the difference between the two leading candidates, and the "swing" column shows the margin swing from the respective party's nominee from 1972 to 1976.

States/districts won by Carter/Mondale
States/districts won by Ford/Dole
Jimmy Carter
Democratic
Gerald Ford
Republican
Eugene McCarthy
Independent
Roger MacBride
Libertarian
Margin Swing State Total
State electoral
votes
# % electoral
votes
# % electoral
votes
# % electoral
votes
# % electoral
votes
# % #
Alabama 9 659,170 55.73 9 504,070 42.61 - - - - 1,481 0.13 - 155,100 13.11 60.00 1,182,850 AL
Alaska 3 44,058 35.65 - 71,555 57.90 3 - - - 6,785 5.49 - -27,497 -22.25 1.26 123,574 AK
Arizona 6 295,602 39.80 - 418,642 56.37 6 19,229 2.59 - 7,647 1.03 - -123,040 -16.57 14.69 742,719 AZ
Arkansas 6 499,614 64.94 6 268,753 34.93 - 647 0.08 - - - - 230,861 30.01 68.12 769,396 AR
California 45 3,742,284 47.57 - 3,882,244 49.35 45 58,412 0.74 - 56,388 0.72 - -139,960 -1.78 11.68 7,867,117 CA
Colorado 7 460,353 42.58 - 584,367 54.05 7 26,107 2.41 - 5,330 0.49 - -124,014 -11.47 16.54 1,081,135 CO
Connecticut 8 647,895 46.90 - 719,261 52.06 8 - - - - - - -71,366 -5.17 13.27 1,381,526 CT
Delaware 3 122,596 51.98 3 109,831 46.57 - 2,437 1.03 - - - - 12,765 5.41 25.82 235,834 DE
D.C. 3 137,818 81.63 3 27,873 16.51 - - - - 274 0.16 - 109,945 65.12 8.58 168,830 DC
Florida 17 1,636,000 51.93 17 1,469,531 46.64 - 23,643 0.75 - 103 0.00 - 166,469 5.28 49.40 3,150,631 FL
Georgia 12 979,409 66.74 12 483,743 32.96 - 991 0.07 - 175 0.01 - 495,666 33.78 84.17 1,467,458 GA
Hawaii 4 147,375 50.59 4 140,003 48.06 - - - - 3,923 1.35 - 7,372 2.53 27.49 291,301 HI
Idaho 4 126,549 37.12 - 204,151 59.88 4 - - - 3,558 1.04 - -77,602 -22.76 15.44 340,932 ID
Illinois 26 2,271,295 48.13 - 2,364,269 50.10 26 55,939 1.19 - 8,057 0.17 - -92,974 -1.97 16.55 4,718,833 IL
Indiana 13 1,014,714 45.70 - 1,183,958 53.32 13 - - - - - - -169,244 -7.62 25.15 2,220,362 IN
Iowa 8 619,931 48.46 - 632,863 49.47 8 20,051 1.57 - 1,452 0.11 - -12,932 -1.01 16.12 1,279,306 IA
Kansas 7 430,421 44.94 - 502,752 52.49 7 13,185 1.38 - 3,242 0.34 - -72,331 -7.55 30.60 957,845 KS
Kentucky 9 615,717 52.75 9 531,852 45.57 - 6,837 0.59 - 814 0.07 - 83,865 7.19 35.79 1,167,142 KY
Louisiana 10 661,365 51.73 10 587,446 45.95 - 6,588 0.52 - 3,325 0.26 - 73,919 5.78 42.75 1,278,439 LA
Maine 4 232,279 48.07 - 236,320 48.91 4 10,874 2.25 - 10 0.00 - -4,041 -0.84 22.14 483,208 ME
Maryland 10 759,612 53.04 10 672,661 46.96 - - - - - - - 86,951 6.07 29.97 1,432,273 MD
Massachusetts 14 1,429,475 56.11 14 1,030,276 40.44 - 65,637 2.58 - 135 0.01 - 399,199 15.67 6.70 2,547,557 MA
Michigan 21 1,696,714 46.44 - 1,893,742 51.83 21 47,905 1.31 - 5,406 0.15 - -197,028 -5.39 9.00 3,653,749 MI
Minnesota 10 1,070,440 54.90 10 819,395 42.02 - 35,490 1.82 - 3,529 0.18 - 251,045 12.87 18.38 1,949,931 MN
Mississippi 7 381,309 49.56 7 366,846 47.68 - 4,074 0.53 - 2,787 0.36 - 14,463 1.88 60.45 769,360 MS
Missouri 12 998,387 51.10 12 927,443 47.47 - 24,029 1.23 - - - - 70,944 3.63 28.22 1,953,600 MO
Montana 4 149,259 45.40 - 173,703 52.84 4 - - - - - - -24,444 -7.44 12.64 328,734 MT
Nebraska 5 233,692 38.46 - 359,705 59.19 5 9,409 1.55 - 1,482 0.24 - -126,013 -20.74 20.26 607,668 NE
Nevada 3 92,479 45.81 - 101,273 50.17 3 - - - 1,519 0.75 - -8,794 -4.36 23.00 201,876 NV
New Hampshire 4 147,635 43.47 - 185,935 54.75 4 4,095 1.21 - 936 0.28 - -38,300 -11.28 17.84 339,618 NH
New Jersey 17 1,444,653 47.92 - 1,509,688 50.08 17 32,717 1.09 - 9,449 0.31 - -65,035 -2.16 22.64 3,014,472 NJ
New Mexico 4 201,148 48.28 - 211,419 50.75 4 - - - 1,110 0.27 - -10,271 -2.47 22.02 416,590 NM
New York 41 3,389,558 51.95 41 3,100,791 47.52 - 4,303 0.07 - 12,197 0.19 - 288,767 4.43 21.77 6,525,225 NY
North Carolina 13 927,365 55.27 13 741,960 44.22 - - - - 2,219 0.13 - 185,405 11.05 51.63 1,677,906 NC
North Dakota 3 136,078 45.80 - 153,470 51.66 3 2,952 0.99 - 256 0.09 - -17,392 -5.85 20.43 297,094 ND
Ohio 25 2,011,621 48.92 25 2,000,505 48.65 - 58,258 1.42 - 8,961 0.22 - 11,116 0.27 21.87 4,111,873 OH
Oklahoma 8 532,442 48.75 - 545,708 49.96 8 14,101 1.29 - - - - -13,266 -1.21 48.49 1,092,251 OK
Oregon 6 490,407 47.62 - 492,120 47.78 6 40,207 3.90 - - - - -1,713 -0.17 9.95 1,029,876 OR
Pennsylvania 27 2,328,677 50.40 27 2,205,604 47.73 - 50,584 1.09 - - - - 123,073 2.66 22.64 4,620,787 PA
Rhode Island 4 227,636 55.36 4 181,249 44.08 - 479 0.12 - 715 0.17 - 46,387 11.28 17.47 411,170 RI
South Carolina 8 450,825 56.17 8 346,140 43.13 - - - - - - - 104,685 13.04 55.70 802,594 SC
South Dakota 4 147,068 48.91 - 151,505 50.39 4 - - - 1,619 0.54 - -4,437 -1.48 7.15 300,678 SD
Tennessee 10 825,879 55.94 10 633,969 42.94 - 5,004 0.34 - 1,375 0.09 - 191,910 13.00 50.95 1,476,346 TN
Texas 26 2,082,319 51.14 26 1,953,300 47.97 - 20,118 0.49 - 263 0.01 - 129,019 3.17 36.13 4,071,884 TX
Utah 4 182,110 33.65 - 337,908 62.44 4 3,907 0.72 - 2,438 0.45 - -155,798 -28.79 12.46 541,198 UT
Vermont 3 81,044 43.14 - 102,085 54.34 3 4,001 2.13 - 4 0.00 - -21,041 -11.20 15.00 187,855 VT
Virginia 12 813,896 47.96 - 836,554 49.29 12 - - - 4,648 0.27 - -22,658 -1.34 36.38 1,697,094 VA
Washington 9 717,323 46.11 - 777,732 50.00 8 36,986 2.38 - 5,042 0.32 - -60,409 -3.88 14.40 1,555,534 WA
West Virginia 6 435,914 58.07 6 314,760 41.93 - - - - - - - 121,154 16.14 43.36 750,674 WV
Wisconsin 11 1,040,232 49.50 11 1,004,987 47.83 - 34,943 1.66 - 3,814 0.18 - 35,245 1.68 11.35 2,101,336 WI
Wyoming 3 62,239 39.81 - 92,717 59.30 3 624 0.40 - 89 0.06 - -30,478 -19.49 19.05 156,343 WY
TOTALS: 538 40,831,881 50.08 297 39,148,634 48.02 240 740,460 0.91 - 172,557 0.21 - 1,683,247 2.06 25.21 81,531,584 US

Close states

Gerald Ford (right) watching election returns with Joe Garagiola on election night in 1976. Garagiola is reacting to television reports that Ford had just lost Texas to Carter.
A campaign button from election eve where Carter and Mondale spent the evening in Flint Michigan at a rally It is notable as only a handful of counties in Michigan went to Carter in 1976, and no surrounding counties where Carter held the rally went to him.
A Ford-Dole campaign button.

States where margin of victory was under 1% (35 electoral votes):

  1. Oregon, 0.16%
  2. Ohio, 0.27%
  3. Maine, 0.84%

States where margin of victory was under 5% (264 electoral votes):

  1. Iowa, 1.01%
  2. Oklahoma, 1.21%
  3. Virginia, 1.34%
  4. South Dakota, 1.48%
  5. Wisconsin, 1.68% (tipping point state)
  6. California, 1.78%
  7. Mississippi, 1.88%
  8. Illinois, 1.97%
  9. New Jersey, 2.16%
  10. New Mexico, 2.47%
  11. Hawaii, 2.53%
  12. Pennsylvania, 2.66%
  13. Texas, 3.17%
  14. Missouri, 3.63%
  15. Washington, 3.88%
  16. Nevada, 4.36%
  17. New York, 4.43%

States where margin of victory was more than 5%, but less than 10% (105 electoral votes):

  1. Connecticut, 5.16%
  2. Florida, 5.29%
  3. Michigan, 5.39%
  4. Delaware, 5.41%
  5. Louisiana, 5.78%
  6. North Dakota, 5.86%
  7. Maryland, 6.08%
  8. Kentucky, 7.18%
  9. Montana, 7.44%
  10. Kansas, 7.55%
  11. Indiana, 7.62%

Statistics

[21]

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Democratic)

  1. Banks County, Georgia 87.85%
  2. Starr County, Texas 87.25%
  3. Brantley County, Georgia 86.50%
  4. Duval County, Texas 86.36%
  5. Wilcox County, Georgia 86.15%

Counties with Highest Percent of Vote (Republican)

  1. Jackson County, Kentucky 79.80%
  2. Owsley County, Kentucky 77.03%
  3. Hooker County, Nebraska 76.35%
  4. Ottawa County, Michigan 74.12%
  5. Arthur County, Nebraska 73.66%

Voter demographics

Social groups and the presidential vote, 1976
Size[A 1] Carter Ford
Party
Democratic 43 77 22
Independent 23 43 54
Republican 28 9 90
Ideology
Liberal 18 70 26
Moderate 51 51 48
Conservative 31 29 69
Ethnicity
Black 10 82 16
Hispanic 2 74 24
White 88 47 51
Gender
Female 48 50 48
Male 52 50 48
Religion
Protestant 46 44 55
White Protestant 41 42 57
Catholic 25 54 44
Jewish 5 64 34
Family income
Less than US$10,000 13 58 40
$10,000–$14,999 15 55 43
$15,000–$24,999 29 48 50
$25,000–$50,000 24 36 62
Over $50,000 5
Occupation
Professional or manager 39 41 57
Clerical, sales, white-collar 11 46 53
Blue-collar 17 57 41
Farmer 3
Unemployed 3 65 34
Education
Less than high school 11 58 39
High school graduate 28 54 44
Some college 28 50 49
College graduate 27 43 55
Union membership
Labor union household 28 59 39
No member of household in union 62 43 55
Age
18–21 years old 6 48 50
22–29 years old 17 51 46
30–44 years old 31 49 49
45–59 years old 23 47 52
60 years or older 18 47 52
Region
East 25 51 47
South 27 54 45
White South 22 46 52
Midwest 27 48 50
Far West 19 46 51
Community size
City over 250,000 18 58 40
Suburb/small city 53 51 47
Rural/town 29 47 51

Source: CBS News/New York Times interviews with 12,782 voters as they left the polls, as reported in The New York Times, November 9, 1980, p. 28, and in further analysis. The 1976 data are from CBS News interviews.

  1. "Size" = share of 1980 national total.

Characteristics

  • As of 2021, the 1976 election was the most recent time that a Democratic candidate carried any of the following states: Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. North Carolina did not vote for a Democratic candidate again until Obama in 2008. Obama also carried Virginia, the only state in the South that Carter did not win.[22]
  • As of 2021, the 1976 election is the earliest election with a living nominee (Carter) and both living vice presidential nominees (Mondale and Dole).
  • As of 2021, the 1976 election was the most recent time that a Democratic candidate won the White House without carrying California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Maine, Vermont, and Washington.
  • This election was the first time since 1908 that Nevada did not back the winning candidate, something that would happen again in 2016.
  • This is the last election that Missouri voted Democratic and Iowa voted Republican in the same election.
  • This is the last election that Georgia voted Democratic along with North Carolina and Florida in the same election.
  • This is the only election that New Mexico did not back the winner of the national popular vote since it had achieved statehood in 1912 (and the first of three where it didn't back the winner of the electoral vote).
  • Ford carried 27 out of 50 states, the most ever won by a losing candidate. He became the second and as of 2016 the last person not to win the presidency while carrying more than half the states. The first was Nixon in 1960, who won in 26 states.
  • This election marks the only time in U.S. history that the two major candidates and their running mates would all win their respective party's nomination for President and lose, coming second in the general election: Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980, Mondale in 1984 and Dole in 1996.
  • With the triumph of Jimmy Carter, the 1976 presidential election was the last time in which a winning presidential candidate from the Democratic Party would win the presidency at the same time their party won majorities in both chambers of Congress and eventually go on to see that party retain control of both houses in the following midterm election (although Carter's party still lost seats in both houses). The subsequent victorious Democrats, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, witnessed the House of Representatives and Senate switch to Republican control during Clinton's in 1994 and Obama losing the House and several seats in the Senate in 2010 (though Clinton and Obama would both go on to be reelected and this would turn out to be Carter's only midterm election).
  • Carter carried 1,711 counties, to Ford's 1,403. Since this election, only Bill Clinton in both 1992 and 1996 carried more than 1,000 counties, and no Democrat since 1976 has won more counties than their Republican opponent.[23]
  • This is the first time in American history where both candidates eventually would become the longest lived president in the history of the United States. Gerald Ford held the record from November 12, 2006 to November 25, 2017. Jimmy Carter got the record on March 22, 2019. This happened once more, in 1980, which also involved Carter.
  • This is the most recent presidential election when the Democratic candidate would emerge victorious with less than 300 electoral votes.

See also

Notes

  1. Mike Padden, a Republican faithless elector from Washington, gave Ronald Reagan one electoral vote.
  2. The running mate of McCarthy varied from state to state.
  3. Research has not yet determined whether Anderson's home state was Tennessee or Texas at the time of the 1976 election.

References

  1. "1976 Presidential Election Statistics". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved August 9, 2020.
  2. A faithless Republican elector voted for Reagan for president. The same elector voted for Dole for vice president as pledged.
  3. "The President and the Vice President have a complete understanding between them regarding the Vice President's decision. The letter speaks for itself. The initiative was the Vice President's" (PDF). Fordlibrarymuseum.gov. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
  4. "1976 Presidential General Election Results". uselectionatlas.org. Retrieved July 24, 2018.
  5. "Election of 1976: A Political Outsider Prevails". Archived from the original on August 2, 2003. Retrieved August 2, 2003.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) C-SPAN. Retrieved on June 20, 2012.
  6. "Commercials - 1976 - Essence". The Living Room Candidate. August 9, 1974. Archived from the original on August 25, 2012. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
  7. Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. pp. 321–322. ISBN 0-465-04195-7.
  8. Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. pp. 321–322. ISBN 0-465-04195-7.
  9. "Gerald Ford Retrospective". Gallup. December 29, 2006. Retrieved October 6, 2019.
  10. Chapter three The Bicentennial election. Archived May 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  11. "Debating Our Destiny: The Second 1976 Presidential Debate – October 6, 1976". Pbs.org. October 6, 1976. Retrieved January 30, 2016.
  12. "The First VP Debate: Dole-Mondale, 10-15-76". Janda.org. October 15, 1976. Retrieved March 4, 2016.
  13. Bob Dole interview, November 10, 1999. PBS.org.
  14. "CPD: 1976 Debates". www.debates.org. Retrieved January 8, 2019.
  15. "1976 Debates Overview". AllPolitics. CNN. 1996. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  16. "The Daily Diary of President Gerald R. Ford - October 22, 1976" (PDF). Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. Retrieved April 24, 2019.
  17. Jules Witcover. Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972–1976 (New York: Viking), p. 11.
  18. "How Close Were U.S. Presidential Elections?". Archived from the original on August 25, 2012. Retrieved August 25, 2012.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  19. Sullivan, Robert David; 'How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century'; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016
  20. "1976 Presidential General Election Data - National". Retrieved March 18, 2013.
  21. "1976 Presidential General Election Data - National". Retrieved March 18, 2013.
  22. "1976 Presidential General Election Results - Virginia". Uselectionatlas.org. Retrieved May 28, 2010.
  23. "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections". Uselectionatlas.org. Retrieved October 21, 2012.

Further reading

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