Nixon, Colson & Cox on 1972 Presidential Election and Ticket-splitting

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Hello?

Oh, it's looking good, Mr. President.

I guess you lose your job.

You lost Massachusetts.

Well, I hope my job doesn't depend on that.

What if it finally ends up... Well, it hasn't.

I just talked to... That isn't too bad, 46.

No, that's what they're talking about, 54, 46.

But the only thing they've got in is Suffolk County, and that's not enough to tell the state.

We're doing well in some blue-collar areas that we weren't expected to.

Right, right.

What if Connecticut, 60, 40, finally?

Well, I just talked to Tommy Musco, and he says it's going to hit 60 when they get them all counted.

which will be over 200,000 that he predicted.

It looks like they're saving one congressman.

It looks like, or maybe two.

How do they do that?

It's an amazing tickle tail thing.

It just isn't working, is it?

Well, you know, it's the penance vote, too, Mr. President.

Don't overlook that.

In New Jersey, we must have picked up a House seat or so.

Oh, we have to.

I haven't seen any of the results, but we have to have picked 62.

What is it?

The New York figure you don't have yet?

Well, the New York, yes.

There are two projections.

NBC is projected on New York, 57%.

But...

CBS has predicted 61, so it's awful early, though.

It's like trying to call any of those northern states.

The pennant's vote is, you know, I think is, really, there's a lot of truth to it.

I just talked to Herb DeSimone, and he said he's going to win, but they've had the heaviest turnout ever in Rhode Island.

And you heard about Chafee.

He said, well, there's no votes reported yet at Rhode Island, but he thinks Chafee is...

Absolutely 50-50.

He said he couldn't win.

He thought if we could just hold that one, that'd be great.

Well, we do.

We've still got a chance to come pretty close to that center.

Well, with Harry Bird.

Well, Helms, have we still got a chance there?

Not enough of North Carolina in the tail, but my God, you're running so strong.

Scott has a chance, I understand.

Scott's ahead.

Scott's running very strong.

The only other sleeper, of course, is Buggs in Delaware.

Is he behind?

Well, he's running 50-50, and that's scary.

We're carrying it.

58?

58%.

Yep.

Michigan is the start of it.

My God, they're projecting us at 58% in Michigan.

You know, that last minute stuff may have helped a bit there.

I think that bussing Ed, they called me yesterday and said that Ed was just a sucker.

So it, yeah, I think it has helped.

And I think the Wallace, are sending the Wallace team out.

We went in there, so we've done that.

Yeah, the Wallace team.

Right.

It's, and Illinois, what's, they don't have our final on that yet.

Well, I just talked to Bradshaw, and he talks to the Daly people.

And they figure, we're going to take fifty-nine percent.

We're going to win the city of Chicago.

Which means that the Daily— We might get sixty then.

We'll get—well, their figure—the Daily people are figuring fifty-nine.

Percy will run behind us.

Really?

We'll run ahead of Percy.

Ogilvy we've pulled in, clearly on our coattails, because— Ogilvy's in?

Yep.

But— Well, they figure it, but clearly on our coattails.

This is the interesting thing.

Ogilvy is doing miserable downstate.

But because you were carrying the city of Chicago, you're pulling them in with you.

And remember, I must say, we got Arch Moore in, too.

Arch Moore, that's a marvelous one to have in.

God, that's a good one.

Sorry about Louis Nunn.

What do you think happened there?

Well, when he was governor, apparently he put the sales tax in on this fellow Huddleston when he was majority leader, took it out.

So, I mean, repealed it for food.

Apparently that's it.

That was a popular thing for him to do.

Here's the Delaware thing with 60% in.

We're 300 votes, Boggs is 300 votes behind.

So he'll carry it.

I think he'll come through.

But we're ahead, aren't we?

Delaware.

58% of the, we're weighing that state by 58%.

We've just got to carry that one.

I would think we would, Mr. President.

I'm 300 votes behind Boggs is.

Oh boy.

With almost 60% of the vote in.

So that's a tough one.

But we knew it was tough, but.

What else could we have done there?

Not a damn thing.

And I should know.

No, no, no.

I called him.

Well, no.

Herb DeSimone said that if he'll catch some help for not going in and campaigning every state, what good would it have done?

Look at the ones we did go in.

It didn't help.

It really doesn't make that much difference.

The thing that I think will be written about this election is that your enormous landslide people are learning how to split ballots.

If a Democrat comes out and votes Republican at the head of the ticket, he may feel, well, I've got to, you know, go back to my party where he was like, I own the ticket.

And that has an impact.

I mean, that's obvious what's happened in Connecticut.

Has the governor said anything yet?

Jean Westwood did.

She said, I don't know.

She said, but too early to say?

No.

She said the poor Senator McGovern was struggling up to all the time.

It's very hard to beat.

It's very hard to beat an incumbent.

God, what an incredible voice she has.

But...

It's obvious they're licked.

Texas tower is in, 58 percent.

Tower?

Yes, sir.

Oh, Christ.

And it looks like we will carry the state with anywhere between 68 and 70 percent, according to the two network projections.

I think we're over 60 nationally now.

going to have to be unless New York and California pull it down.

Well, California is the only possibility of pulling that down.

But you couldn't pull that down that much.

No, you can't.

And especially with—see, we've got Michigan.

I've heard nothing from Wisconsin.

Well, Wisconsin isn't enough votes to pull it down.

No.

And those mountain states, hell, those in the neighborhood are sixty-five.

Well, I mean, Oklahoma, they haven't called it yet, but you're taking seventy-five percent of the vote, which is—that's a fairly good size state.

You go through the Kansas

Let's see, Kansas with 70 signal.

I don't have the projection with 63% on the actual total, but we'll do better than that, I think.

Schertz is watching the networks just to gig him in case they give us bad blood.

Oh, he's monitoring all three of them tonight, yes, sir.

I understand they're doing fairly well, aren't they, the networks?

I don't think so.

I've been watching mainly NBC.

Brinkley said once that the vote was very low, and that proved to be wrong.

I understand it's over 80 million.

Yeah, and Chancellor said Johnson had the biggest landslide ever, which, of course, he didn't.

So they're usual inaccuracies.

It's not much good to watch CBS because they really have some troubles with their labor unions.

They're losing three or four million a day.

It's very sad.

That's a shame.

I'm shedding a lot of tears for CBS.

Now, as I look at each of these, Mesko, when I talked to him, he said it was just what he figured.

He said, you've got the blue-collar Catholics, and he said they're over there with him.

He said just...

Keep him.

And Herb DeSimone said that he's convinced that your coming in has pulled him ahead.

He's convinced he'll win because of your coming in.

We don't have a number on ourselves in Rhode Island, do we?

No, nothing's been counted up there.

But Herb thinks he's in.

No, he thinks he's going to make it.

He knows you are.

He thinks J.P. may.

And he said he would give J.P. 50-50.

He said just so damn close he could

So we've got shaky and bogs to real tough ones there.

Yeah.

Now Powell, the last—I don't have the figures, but Powell had moved ahead in the last counting in New Hampshire, and that's on an actual count.

Now considering the way that state reports, you're going to be getting Concord heavily at the outset, so that—and the Concord area— Well, where he ought to do well is in Manchester.

Yeah.

Well, he may—if he's ahead early in the evening, I would think he has a good shot at winning it.

So we may pick one up in Powell.

Margaret?

Nothing from Maine yet.

No, nothing from Maine yet.

I haven't seen anything on Maine.

That's funny.

I guess the...

Nothing from that South Dakota senator yet?

Yeah, you've won South Dakota.

Oh, no.

You've won South Dakota.

Oh, I figured we would.

They've projected it.

What was that?

They project 55-45.

I think it'll be better than that.

We haven't heard about it.

No.

In fact, they've just started the boats coming in from South Dakota.

So we don't—we don't hit on it.

Well, I figure on the Senate then that we lose one in Kentucky and we could conceivably lose one in South Dakota.

And conceivably Delaware.

And Delaware lose three.

We could pick up one in New Hampshire.

We could pick up one

Maybe in Virginia, and we could pick up one in North Carolina still, right?

Yeah, North Carolina, Oklahoma.

You could still pick up one in Rhode Island, and one in Oklahoma, and one in New Mexico.

That's right.

There's one, two, three.

We could gain three.

Well, we may not lose Delaware.

I may not lose Delaware.

We could gain three to five.

It doesn't look like it actually, in the sense, though, that, I must say, in the sense that

that there's such ticket splitting, and I think that's a phenomenon.

Well, we'll see.

I think that's the phenomenon of the— Some way, I think he could make it in some way.

He's an attractive fellow, and he's been running a hell of a fine campaign.

So, yeah, that's one that, if we held up and picked up two of the others, we'd have a net gain of three.

We need to hold that and get Bartlett and Domenici.

That's right.

And he'd wonder if we'd gone to Louisville rather than eastern Kentucky if that would have done the trick for none.

No, he was too far behind.

He's 25,000 votes.

Nothing would have saved him.

I wouldn't think so.

You know, there's another thing that you have to remember, I think at least, when there's a big vote for the head of the ticket, which really is one hell of an endorsement of you.

You bring out a lot of brass collar Democrats.

That's right.

And they vote for you.

Be ready, Trish.

Okay.

They vote for you, and I'm ready.

They vote for you and then they go back to their party way, plus apparently that tax issue was a killer on a governor or an ex-governor.

Sure is.

But I now think, Mr. President, unless there's some surprises, that you've got a— We're holding—it looks now that even the more conservative networks are projecting about 60, aren't they?

Yes, sir.

and some even projecting a little more than that.

Yeah, privately.

Phillips tells me that NBC says between 61 and 62, based on their projection.

Well, based on the— Yeah.

Of course, some of this is higher than they think.

I don't know.

It could be.

Oh, yeah.

I can't have the kind of margins in some of these places.

Well, we'll see what New York does.

Well, I'll take Connecticut as a perfect example.

You're 60-40 in Connecticut.

It's, to me, pretty clear that you—

You're going to do that well.

And Illinois and New York, sure.

You take those three states.

And Ohio is about 64.

And Ohio is close to 64.

And Michigan is... Up to 58, if that projection is accurate.

Sure, then you can't go lower because the south is just, we're up to around 70% in the south on the average, I guess.

California then coming in at 55, see, can't overbalance that.

No, can't.

You'd still be at 60.

Well, that's good.

We'll know more in how long, about an hour?

I would say a good bit more than an hour.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Nixon, Colson & Cox on 1972 Presidential Election and Ticket-splitting

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on November 8, 1972

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