United States presidential election in Mississippi, 1972

The 1972 United States presidential election in Mississippi was held on November 7, 1972. Incumbent President Nixon won the state of Mississippi with 78.20 percent of the vote, his most overwhelming dominance in any of the fifty states, carrying the Magnolia State’s seven electoral votes. Nixon defeated McGovern by a whopping margin of 58.57 points, a larger margin than McGovern’s in the District of Columbia, and a margin never equalled in any state since and exceeded by any Republican nominee in the party’s history only five times.

McGovern carried only three counties, all of which have an overwhelming majority black population. In archconservative, racially sensitive Mississippi, McGovern was universally viewed as a left-wing extremist because of his support for busing and civil rights, plus his opposition to the Vietnam War, support for granting amnesty to draft dodgers and support for a thousand-dollar giveaway to each American as a solution to poverty. Many, especially Republican campaigners, also believed McGovern would legalise abortion and illicit drugs if he were elected – despite the fact that his running mate Sargent Shriver was firmly pro-life.

Consequently, the proportion of white voters supporting McGovern was utterly negligible, and even the newly enfranchised and loyally Democratic African-American population did not accept McGovern’s radical ideas, with the result that for the second time in three elections one of the historically strongest members of the former Democratic “Solid South” became the most Republican state in the nation. Even in a huge landslide, Mississippi voted 34 percentage points more Republican than the nation at-large.