The 1972 United States presidential election in Mississippi was held on November 7, 1972. Incumbent President Nixon won the state of Mississippi with 78.20% of the vote.[1] This was the highest percentage Nixon received in any state in the election.[2]
In Mississippi, voters voted for electors individually instead of as a slate, as in the other states. McGovern carried only three counties – Claiborne, Holmes, and Jefferson – all of which have overwhelming majority black populations.[3] Nixon would also be the first presidential candidate since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 to win Mississippi and the election.
As of the 2020 presidential election[update], this is the last election in which the following counties voted for a Republican presidential candidate: Marshall, Quitman, Bolivar, Sharkey, Wilkinson, Humphreys, Coahoma, Noxubee, and Tunica.[4] The proportion of white voters supporting McGovern was utterly negligible and estimated at maximally three percent.[5] Calculated estimates indicate that 100% of white voters supported Nixon while 0% supported McGovern.[6][7]
^Black, Earl (2021). "Competing Responses to the New Southern Politics: Republican and Democratic Southern Strategies, 1964-76". In Reed, John Shelton; Black, Merle (eds.). Perspectives on the American South: An Annual Review of Society, Politics, and Culture. ISBN9781136764882.