The United States presidential election of 1976 followed the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It favored the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate over the incumbent President Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate. Ford was saddled with a slow economy and paid a political price for his pardon of Nixon, although he did carry a majority of the states. Carter, running as a Washington outsider and reformer, won a narrow victory. He was the first president elected from the Deep South since Zachary Taylor in 1848.
Since 1976, no Democratic candidate has managed to match or better Carter's electoral performance in the American South.
Following the October 21, 2012, death of 1972 Democratic Party nominee George McGovern, this is now the earliest United States presidential election where one of the two major candidates is still living, that being the winning candidate Jimmy Carter, who is 88 years old.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or presidential:
“The Federated Republic of Europe—the United States of Europe—that is what must be. National autonomy no longer suffices. Economic evolution demands the abolition of national frontiers. If Europe is to remain split into national groups, then Imperialism will recommence its work. Only a Federated Republic of Europe can give peace to the world.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“In the case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of ... powers not granted by the compact, the States ... are in duty bound to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The Republican Vice Presidential Candidate ... asks you to place him a heartbeat from the Presidency.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)