1976 United States Senate election in Missouri

The 1976 United States Senate election in Missouri took place on November 2, 1976. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Stuart Symington decided to retire, instead of seeking a fifth term. Republican John Danforth won the open seat, defeating Democrat Warren Hearnes. (Jerry Litton had won the Democratic nomination earlier, but died in a plane crash on the night of the primary election, and Hearnes was chosen by the party committee.)

1976 United States Senate election in Missouri
November 2, 1976
 
Nominee John Danforth Warren E. Hearnes
Party Republican Democratic
Popular vote 1,090,067 813,571
Percentage 56.9% 42.5%
County Results

Danforth:      50-60%      60-70%      70-80%

Hearnes:      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%
U.S. senator before election

Stuart Symington
Democratic

 Elected U.S. Senator

John Danforth
Republican

Elections in Missouri

Democratic primary

Candidates

Results
1976 Democratic U.S. Senate primary[1]
Party Candidate Votes %
Democratic Jerry Litton 401,822 45.40%
Democratic Warren Hearnes 140,446 23.90%
Democratic James Symington 222,681 12.86%
Democratic Charles Wheeler 10,894 1.23%
Democratic William McKinley Thomas 4,865 0.55%
Democratic Lee C. Sutton 4,784 0.54%
Democratic Norman Tucker 1,923 0.22%
Democratic Jim Tyler 1,923 0.22%
Democratic Terry Richards 1,425 0.16%
Democratic Horace Kingery 1,207 0.14%
Total votes 885,068 100.00%

On primary night, Representative Litton and his entire family died in a plane crash en route to his victory party.[2] To replace Litton on the general election ticket, the Missouri Democratic State Committee held a meeting and elected runner-up Warren Hearnes as the party's nominee. He was chosen over State Treasurer of Missouri Jim Spainhower.

1976 Missouri Democratic State Committee vote[3]
Party Candidate Votes %
Democratic Warren Hearnes 38 63.33%
Democratic Jim Spainhower 22 36.67%
Total votes 60 100.00%

Republican primary

Candidates
  • John Danforth, Attorney General of Missouri and nominee for Senate in 1970
  • Gregory Hansman, candidate for Lt. Governor in 1972 and Senate in 1974

Results
1976 Republican U.S. Senate primary[4]
Party Candidate Votes %
Republican John Danforth 284,025 93.48%
Republican Gregory Hansman 19,796 6.52%
Total votes 303,821 100.00%

Independents and third parties

Independent
  • Lawrence "Red" Petty, unsuccessful candidate for the American Party nomination for Senate in 1970

General election

Results
General election results[5]
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Republican John Danforth 1,090,067 56.94% 8.79
Democratic Warren E. Hearnes 813,571 42.50% 8.54
Independent Lawrence "Red" Petty 10,822 0.57% N/A
Turnout 1,914,460 100.00%
Republican gain from Democratic
gollark: I made an automatic rap generation programIt works by appending an unrelated word which rhymes with the end of the previous line amTo every second lineThis totally counts as rap mineVery valid rap indeedI win esolangs now speed
gollark: Nobody can diss my rhymesBecause they are made from fresh limesThis is the next lineApparently that rhymes with pine
gollark: My rhymes are strangeBut I'm going to rhyme with orængeI'm using a rhyming dictionaryOnline, not from the libraryTechnically it's an API for word association queriesThere exists a thing known as a "geometric series"
gollark: I am going to rip you apartSimilarly to shredded cheeseBy deploying a railgunWhich shoots bees
gollark: I made time parsing workthough it has a weird quirkbecause it turns out that general parsing of times is quite a hard problem, so I just had it parse one hardcoded date format, parse time *deltas* using a nice regex, and use some random library for the rest.

See also

References
  1. "MO US Senate - D Primary". OurCampaigns. Retrieved 15 August 2019.
  2. Rep. Litton dies in plane crash, as he wins voting
  3. "MO US Senate - D Replacement Nominee". OurCampaigns. Retrieved 15 August 2019.
  4. "MO US Senate - R Primary". OurCampaigns. Retrieved 15 August 2019.
  5. http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/1976election.pdf
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.