1972 United States presidential election in Florida
The 1972 United States presidential election in Florida was held on November 7, 1972, as part of the concurrent United States presidential election. Florida voters chose seventeen electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. Incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon won the state over the Democratic nominee, South Dakota Senator George McGovern, by a landslide margin of 44.11% and over one million votes. After having been among the strongest parts of the Democratic "Solid South" between 1892 and 1944 – except when vehement anti-Catholicism in the Panhandle and urban Republican support gave the state's electoral votes to Herbert Hoover in 1928 – Florida turned into a Republican-leaning state at the presidential level from 1948 due to the growth of a strongly business-oriented society in, and influx of conservative Northern retirees to, newly-developed South Florida following World War II. Aided by this vote, the Republicans carried Florida in all three presidential elections from 1952 to 1960, though North Florida remained Democratic-leaning. The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a dramatic change in the next two elections. The classically Deep Southern north of the state, affected by turmoil over school and university desegregation, went powerfully