1972 United States presidential election

===Primaries===
Nixon was a popular incumbent president in 1972, as he was credited with opening the [[People's Republic of China]] as a result of [[Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China|his visit]] that year, and achieving [[détente]] with the [[Soviet Union]]. Polls showed that Nixon held a strong lead in the Republican primaries. He was challenged by two candidates: [[modern liberalism in the United States|liberal]] [[Pete McCloskey]] from California, and [[conservatism in the United States|conservative]] [[John Ashbrook]] from Ohio. McCloskey ran as an anti-war candidate, while Ashbrook opposed Nixon's détente policies towards [[People's Republic of China|China]] and the Soviet Union. In the [[New Hampshire primary]], McCloskey garnered 19.8% of the vote to Nixon's 67.6%, with Ashbrook receiving 9.7%.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.primarynewhampshire.com/new-hampshire-primary-past-results.php |title=New Hampshire Primary historical past election results. 2008 Democrat & Republican past results. John McCain, Hillary Clinton winners |publisher=Primarynewhampshire.com |access-date=2014-08-17 |archive-date=July 15, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110715112805/http://www.primarynewhampshire.com/new-hampshire-primary-past-results.php |url-status=dead }}</ref> Nixon won 1323 of the 1324 delegates to the Republican convention, with McCloskey receiving the vote of one delegate from New Mexico. Vice President [[Spiro Agnew]] was re-nominated by acclamation; while both the party's moderate wing and Nixon himself had wanted to replace him with a new running-mate (the moderates favoring [[Nelson Rockefeller]], and Nixon favoring [[John Connally]]), it was ultimately concluded that such action would incur too great a risk of losing Agnew's base of conservative supporters.