Gerald Ford Republican Jimmy Carter Democratic Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1976.

The Democratic ticket of Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia, and his running mate Walter Mondale, the senior senator from Minnesota, narrowly defeated the Republican ticket of Gerald Ford, the incumbent president, and his running mate Bob Dole, the junior senator from Kansas.

Ford ascended to the presidency when Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which badly damaged the Republican Party and its electoral prospects.

Ford promised to continue Nixon's political agenda and govern as a moderate Republican, causing considerable backlash from the conservative wing of his party.

This spurred former California governor Ronald Reagan to mount a significant challenge against him in the Republican primaries, in which Ford narrowly prevailed.

Campaigning as a political moderate within his own party and as a Washington outsider, Carter defeated numerous opponents to clinch the Democratic nomination.

[3] Ford pursued a "Rose Garden strategy" in which he sought to portray himself as an experienced leader focused on fulfilling his role as chief executive.

[5] Saddled with a poor economy, the fall of South Vietnam, and the political fallout from the Watergate scandal, including his unpopular pardon of Richard Nixon, Ford trailed by a wide margin in polls taken after Carter's formal nomination in July 1976.

Ford's polling rebounded after a strong performance in the first presidential debate, and the race was close on election day.

Additionally, Carter's narrow victories in Ohio and Wisconsin, which carried a combined 36 electoral votes, were especially crucial to his win.

His loss to Carter was due in part to the backlash against Republican candidates nationwide in the wake of the Watergate scandal, a trend that became apparent in the 1974 elections.

The surprise winner of the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination was Jimmy Carter, a former state senator and governor of Georgia.

When the primaries began, Carter was little-known at the national level, and many political pundits regarded a number of better-known candidates, such as Senator Henry M. Jackson from Washington, Representative Morris Udall from Arizona, Governor George Wallace of Alabama, and California Governor Jerry Brown, as the favorites for the nomination.

However, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Carter realized that his status as a Washington outsider, political centrist, and moderate reformer could give him an advantage over his better-known establishment rivals.

Henry M. Jackson made a fateful decision not to compete in the early Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, which Jimmy Carter won after liberals split their votes among four other candidates.

The leaders of the "ABC" movement, Idaho Senator Frank Church and California Governor Jerry Brown, both announced their candidacies for the Democratic nomination, and defeated Carter in several late primaries.

At the 1976 Democratic National Convention, Carter easily won the nomination on the first ballot; Udall finished in second place.

The presidential primary campaign between the two men was hard-fought and relatively even; by the start of the Republican Convention in August 1976, the race for the nomination was still too close to call.

Ford defeated Reagan by a narrow margin on the first ballot at the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, and chose Senator Bob Dole from Kansas as his running mate in the place of incumbent vice president Nelson Rockefeller, who had announced the previous year that he was not interested in being considered for the vice presidential nomination.

[36] On July 7, 1976, the President and First Lady served as hosts at a White House state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of the United Kingdom, which was televised on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network.

[44] One factor that did help Ford in the closing days of the campaign was a series of popular television appearances he did with Joe Garagiola, a retired baseball player for the St. Louis Cardinals and a well-known announcer for NBC Sports.

[45][46] Despite his campaign's blunders, Ford managed to close the remaining gap in the polls, and by election day, the race was judged to be even.

Had Ford won the election, the provisions of the 22nd Amendment would have disqualified him from running in 1980, as he served more than two years of Nixon's second term.

Carter is one of six Democrats since the American Civil War to obtain an absolute majority of the popular vote, the others being Samuel J. Tilden, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.