The 1972 United States presidential election in Maine took place on November 7, 1972, as part of the 1972 United States presidential election which was held throughout all fifty states and the

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. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for

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and

vice president A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and ...

was won by the incumbent Republican president

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

by a landslide 23 point margin over his Democratic challenger, Senator George McGovern of

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large porti ...

. Nixon took 61.46% of the vote, totaling up to 256,458 votes, to McGovern’s 38.48%, and 160,584 votes. In the midst of Nixon’s massive 49-state landslide victory, Maine voted almost exactly as the country did, only voting about 0.7% more Republican than the nation as a whole. Richard Nixon swept every county in the state except for Androscoggin, where McGovern won by a mere 103 votes. Androscoggin was the solitary county McGovern won in the Northeast outside of

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or in the city limits of

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

, New York,

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

, and

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. Nixon's victory was the first of five consecutive Republican victories in the state, as Maine would not vote for a Democratic candidate again until

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

in 1992; it has since become a Democratic-leaning state. Since 1972 no presidential candidate of either party has surpassed Nixon’s 61.46% of the vote in Maine (the closest being Ronald Reagan’s 60.83% in

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). This was the first presidential election in which Maine allocated its electoral votes proportionally, giving 2 electoral votes to the overall winner of the state and 1 electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district.

Results

Results by county

References

{{1972 United States elections

1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using mean solar tim ...

1972 Maine elections

Results

Results by county

See also

References