page_title: 1976 United States presidential election
section_title: Close states
hierarchical_section_title: 1976 United States presidential election / General election / Statistics / Close states
caption_attribution_description: English: Baseball player and television personality Joe Garagiola (left) watches 1976 election returns with US President Gerald Ford (right). Français&#160;: Gerald Ford et le joueur de Baseball Joe Garagiola lors de la présidentielle de 1976.
context_page_description: The 1976 United States presidential election was the 48th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1976. Democrat Jimmy Carter of Georgia defeated incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford from Michigan. Carter's win represented the lone Democratic victory in a presidential election held between 1968 and 1992.
  President Richard Nixon had won the 1972 election with Spiro Agnew as his running mate, but in 1973 Agnew resigned and Ford was appointed as vice president via the 25th Amendment. When Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Ford ascended to the presidency, becoming the only president to have never been elected by the Electoral College. He faced a strong challenge from conservative former governor and future president Ronald Reagan of California in the Republican primaries, but Ford narrowly prevailed at the convention. Carter was little-known at the start of the Democratic primaries, but the former governor of Georgia emerged as the front-runner after his victories in the first set of primaries.
context_section_description: States where margin of victory was under 1% (35 electoral votes):
  Oregon, 0.16%
  Ohio, 0.27% 
  Maine, 0.84% 
  States where margin of victory was under 5% (264 electoral votes):
  Iowa, 1.01% 
  Oklahoma, 1.21% 
  Virginia, 1.34% 
  South Dakota, 1.48% 
  Wisconsin, 1.68%  (tipping point state)
  California, 1.78% 
  Mississippi, 1.88% 
  Illinois, 1.97% 
  New Jersey, 2.16% 
  New Mexico, 2.47% 
  Hawaii, 2.53% 
  Pennsylvania, 2.66% 
  Texas, 3.17% 
  Missouri, 3.63% 
  Washington, 3.88% 
  Nevada, 4.36% 
  New York, 4.43% 
  States where margin of victory was more than 5%, but less than 10% (105 electoral votes):
  Connecticut, 5.16% 
  Florida, 5.29% 
  Michigan, 5.39% 
  Delaware, 5.41% 
  Louisiana, 5.78% 
  North Dakota, 5.86% 
  Maryland, 6.08% 
  Kentucky, 7.18% 
  Montana, 7.44% 
  Kansas, 7.55% 
  Indiana, 7.62%
caption: Gerald Ford (right) watching election returns with Joe Garagiola on election night in 1976. Garagiola is reacting to television reports that Ford had just lost Texas to Carter.
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