New Mexico was won by President Richard Nixon by a 24-point landslide, mirroring the national popular vote margin by a near perfect amount and making New Mexico 1.3% more Republican than the nation-at-large. McGovern won only two counties: he comfortably won Rio Arriba County by 12.6 percentage points, and also won San Miguel County by 2.5 percentage points.Dave Leip’s Atlas of US Presidential Elections; 1972 Presidential General Election Data Graphs – New Mexico by County The 1972 election remains the last when Santa Fe, Taos or Mora Counties provided a Republican majority or plurality,Sullivan, Robert David; ‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016 and Nixon won Mora County by a mere thirty votes. At the other extreme, solidly Republican Lea County in the Plains region was won by Nixon by 55.4 percent, and Lincoln County, which had not voted Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 landslide, by 55.9 percent.
