The Election of 1976The Southern Drawl vs. White House Fixer-Upper

“Apathy is dead,” said Paul Sullivan, the Illinois manager for Jimmy Carter. The number of voters was “astonishingly heavy” as they came to vote in “fantastically high” number. With beautiful weather across the country reports of jammed voting places came in from state after state. Before the polls would close in Florida, they would report on having reached the highest level of voter turn-out since 1952. Labor unions that had supported the Carter campaign with their unusually sophisticated computer-designed voting operation also played a major role in the large turnout throughout.
Rolling around issues involving Watergate and having the government lie to the people, many citizens were ready to lose faith in their system of governing. The population of Americans at the legal voting age was expected to let apathy reign amongst them, to care less about a government that could care less about being honest and clean with them.
As a result, the 1976 election was dominated ...