In 1976, jimmy carter won the presidential race in part because he:

Jimmy Carter won and beaten the incumbent Gerald Ford in the 1976 Presidential Election by a narrow margin. Both candidates bungled during their televised debates. Although a dark horse candidate, Carter presented himself as a reformer and an untainted candidate, which was important at that time when the nation still remembers the Watergate Scandal. Ford’s pardoning of Nixon and refusal to explain grounds to do so hurted his public image a lot. The results were pretty close, as Carter won 287 electoral votes while Ford finished with 240.

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