Carter came across as credible on foreign affairs, while Ford, in fact, committed a major gaffe, claiming that Poland was not dominated by the Soviet Union. Most importantly, Ford’s standing among voters never fully recovered from his deeply unpopular surprise pardon of Nixon. On November 2, 1976, Carter narrowly won the presidency, garnering 50 percent of the vote to Ford’s 48 percent. Democrats retained a two-thirds majority in the House and a 61-seat majority in the Senate.
