United States presidential election in North Carolina, 1972

The 1972 United States presidential election in North Carolina took place on November 7, 1972 throughout all fifty states and D.C., which was part of the 1972 United States presidential election. Voters chose thirteen representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice President.

North Carolina voted strongly for Republican nominee President Richard Nixon, over Democratic nominee Senator George McGovern. North Carolina voted overwhelmingly for President Nixon, who won 69.46% to 28.89%, one of the biggest margins in the country.

McGovern won only the typically extremely strong Democratic counties of Northampton and Orange – two counties with a record of having voted Democratic at every election since 1904, apart from Orange County’s vote against the Catholic Al Smith in 1928. Even in these counties, where most Democratic candidates expect to receive well over sixty percent of the vote and Walter Mondale in his disastrous 1984 loss won by over 13 percent, McGovern won by only 236 votes in Northampton County and 1,002 out of over twenty-three thousand in Orange County.

In the process Nixon managed to challenge the long-established Democratic bastion in the state’s northeast, which rivals South Texas as the longest-lived extant Democrat stronghold in the entire United States. It is the only time since 1900 that Hoke, Hertford and Bertie Counties have voted against the Democratic candidate, the only time that Durham has voted for the Republican candidate since 1928, and the only time Anson, Halifax, Warren and Edgecombe Counties have supported a Republican candidate since 1896.