1972 United States presidential election

== Voter demographics ==
Nixon won 36 percent of the Democratic vote, according to an [[exit poll]] conducted for [[CBS News]] by George Fine Research, Inc.<ref name="desertion"/> This represents more than twice the percentage of voters who typically defect from their party in presidential elections. Nixon also became the first Republican presidential candidate in American history to win the [[Roman Catholic]] vote (53–46), and the first in recent history to win the [[blue-collar]] vote, which he won by a 5-to-4 margin. McGovern narrowly won the union vote (50–48), though this difference was within the survey's margin of error of 2 percentage points. McGovern also narrowly won the youth vote (i. e., those aged 18 to 24) 52–46, a narrower margin than many of his strategists had predicted. Early on, the McGovern campaign also significantly over-estimated the number of young people who would vote in the election: They predicted that 18 million would have voted in total, but exit polls indicate that the actual number was about 12 million. McGovern did win comfortably among both [[African-American]] and [[American Jews|Jewish voters]], but by somewhat smaller margins than usual for a Democratic candidate.<ref name="desertion">{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/09/archives/new-jersey-pages-desertion-rate-doubles-defectors-gave-nixon.html |title=Desertion Rate Doubles |last=Rosenthal |first=Jack |author-link=Jack Rosenthal (journalist) |date=1972-11-09 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2019-12-01 |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331 |archive-date=December 29, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191229112859/https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/09/archives/new-jersey-pages-desertion-rate-doubles-defectors-gave-nixon.html |url-status=live }}</ref> McGovern won the African American vote by 87% to Nixon's 13%.<ref>{{cite news|title=Survey Reports McGovern Got 87% of the Black Vote|work=The New York Times |date=November 12, 1972 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/12/archives/survey-reports-mcgovern-got-87-of-the-black-vote.html|access-date=February 8, 2023|archive-date=February 8, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230208095134/https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/12/archives/survey-reports-mcgovern-got-87-of-the-black-vote.html|url-status=live}}</ref>