George Wallace never gets shot
- Thread starter SportsGenius
- Start date
He would continue the primaries become one of candidate for President election against Nixon.
But would He win the 1972 Democratic National Convention ?
But would He win the 1972 Democratic National Convention ?
No. If anything the shooting may have bolstered his vote due to a "sympathy factor" in MI and MD just after the shooting (though this may have been exaggerated by some observers; a very unpopular court busing order was probably the biggest factor in MI) but in any event he just did not have the delegates outside the South and border states. MI and IN were the only northern states where he got a substantial number of delegates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries In the end he got only 12.67% of the delegate vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Democratic_National_Convention In PA, for example, he got only 2 of the state's 137 delegates, despite getting 21.27% of the primary vote, in IL he got none of the state's 153 delegates, none of MA's 102,none of WI's 67, etc.--just to mention some states that held their primaries before the shooting. Without the shooting Wallace might have done better than the 7.53 percent he got in winner-take-all CA, but he still had virtually no chance to win the state and its 271 delegates. Likewise, he was not going to get any substantial number of New York's 248 delegates. And he probably needs an actual majority of delegates on the first ballot to win; he is not going to be chosen as a compromise candidate!
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I remind that he was planning to run for Senate. He could succeeded in 1978: he runs instead his ally Rapresentive Walter Flowers, defeats Judge Howell Heflin in primary and then goes to win the general election in a landslide (as usual for a Democratic in Alabama before 1980).