Appearing at the Shorthand Hotel to address his campaign workers shortly after midnight. Nixon began his talk with abundant praise of his running-mate. Vice president Spiro T. Agnew. "The Vice President has proved he's a great campaigner," Nixon said.
Referring to his re-election as maybe the greatest victory in American political history." Nixon said it "will be a great victory depending on what we up with it."
He thanked his campaign workers "for making, our last campaign the very best one of all."
The Nixon cast their voted in San Clemente, Calif., and the McGoverns voted in Sinux Falls S.D.
For McGovern, it was the end of a 22 month campaign in which he drove uphill to win the nomination but could not continue the ascent to the White House.
Concentrating on the major-industrial states. McGovern traveled over 200,000miles including 4,000 might be like day before the election.
In contrast, Nixon run a low-key campaign, appearing on radio and television only in the last stretch of the campaign and never once mentioning the name of his opponent. His only election-eve activity was a tapped, 13-paragraph statement in which he pledged a speedy end to the war.
The disclosure nearly two weeks age of seemingly substantial peace negotiations boosted an already soaring Republican campaign. For many voters, the rumored immense of peace deprived the South Dakota senator of his major issue.
The disclosure of Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton's history of mental illness helped obscure all issues by forcing McGovern to seek a new running-mate only days after the Democratic Convention ended. Combined with McGovern's reversal on his welfare proposals, the Eagleton affair permitted Nixon to depict the challenger as an incompetent who could not control his own staff, let alone the country.
McGovern's attempt to make correction a chief issue in the campaign was unsuccessful. Pointing to a range of alleged scandals involving dairy farmers, wheel formers, ITT, and the bugging of the Democratic headquarters at Watergate, McGovern called the Nixon Administration "the most corrupt in American history." These criticisms seemed to backfire, however, as many voters objected to their shrill tone