Issues, Candidates and Partisan Divisions in the 1972 American Presidential Election

Abstract

American presidential politics in the 1960s and early 1970s was marked by the kinds of forces that characterize a period of electoral instability. These forces affected not only individual voters but also the candidates, parties and issues that interact as part of the electoral system. Among them was an increase in ‘issue voting’ which emphasized intra-party polarization on various non-economic issues. The civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, riots in the cities, crime in the streets and other issues provided focal points for increased debate among political leaders and for the responses of an electorate newly mobilized by policy concerns. At the same time, the established political parties were faced with increased partisan defection and ticket splitting, by a rise in the number of political Independents and by the appearance of a threatening third-party movement. Even the styles and personalities of the parties’ presidential candidates contributed to the instability. The candidates presented to the electorate ran a gamut of styles and personalities that included the articulate Kennedy, the folksy Johnson, the impulsive Goldwater and the calculating Nixon. Along with the rise in mass interest in matters of policy came a new questioning of the trustworthiness and integrity of political leaders and the government in general. There also appeared in this period a new politics of confrontation, an influx into the electorate of young voters following the lowering of the voting age to 18, and a budding concern with the issues of ‘acid’, amnesty and abortion that the ‘New Politics’ promoted.