Democratic Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia defeated Republican incumbent President Gerald Ford . Carter won the popular vote by two points and finished with 297 electoral votes , taking a mix of Southern and Northern states . Ford , who had taken office after the Watergate scandal led to the resignation of Republican President Richard Nixon in 1974 , defeated California Governor Ronald Reagan to take the Republican nomination . The convention nominated Kansas Senator Bob Dole as Ford 's running mate , instead of sitting Vice President Nelson Rockefeller . Carter defeated a slew of competitors in the 1976 Democratic primaries , including California Governor Jerry Brown , Alabama Governor George Wallace , Arizona Congressman Mo Udall , Washington Senator Henry M. Jackson , and Idaho Senator Frank Church . Neither the House nor Senate saw major changes in partisan composition , so the Democrats retained control of Congress . Democrats won the nationwide popular vote for the House of Representatives by a margin of 13.6 percentage points
Republican nomination
1976 Republican National Convention
1976 United States elections