1976 Democratic Party presidential primaries

1976 Democratic Party presidential primaries

← 1972 January 27 to June 8, 1976 1980 →
3,010 delegates to the 1976 Democratic National Convention 1,506 (majority) votes needed to win
Candidate Jimmy Carter Mo Udall Henry M. Jackson Home state Georgia Arizona Washington Delegate count 1,130 328 242 Contests won 24 1 4 Popular vote 7,020,624 1,667,362 1,153,766 Percentage 39.67% 9.42% 6.52%   Candidate Jerry Brown George Wallace Frank Church Home state California Alabama Idaho Delegate count 226 146 78 Contests won 3 2 4 Popular vote 2,449,374 2,268,895 831,209 Percentage 13.84% 12.82% 4.70%
First place by popular vote First place by delegate allocation First place by convention roll call      Carter      Udall      Brown      Jackson      Wallace      Church      Humphrey      Byrd      Uncommitted
Previous Democratic nominee George McGovern Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter

From January 27 to June 8, 1976, voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for president in the 1976 United States presidential election. Former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter was selected as the nominee through a series of primary elections and caucuses culminating in the 1976 Democratic National Convention held from July 12 to July 15, 1976, in New York City.

The primaries took place after the Watergate scandal and the subsequent Democratic landslide in the 1974 midterm elections, and going into the presidential election in 1976, the Democratic Party stood a strong chance of recapturing control of the White House. Hoping to avoid a repeat of 1972, Democrats chose the Centrist governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, to reclaim the Solid South and win back northern working class voters. Carter was nominated by the convention and he ultimately defeated President Gerald Ford by a narrow margin, marking the 1976 Democratic primaries the only time between 1968 to 1992 that a Democratic nominee has won a presidential general election.