‘October Surprise’: The US election phenomenon that can sway a presidential race

Louise NORDSTROM

30 September 2024 at 1:46 pm·1-min read

Few American presidential elections have sailed all the way through to Election Day without one – or more – unexpected news events, sometimes turning a race totally on its head. This last-minute phenomenon is known as an “October Surprise” and has changed the course of more than one US election over the past 50 years.

On October 26, 1972 – just days before the American people were due at the ballots – President Richard Nixon’s security adviser, Henry Kissinger, suddenly declared that peace was “at hand” in the costly and controversial US war effort in Vietnam. Although Nixon had already been widely slated to win, and the initial peace talks would fall apart less than two months later, the sudden prospect of peace essentially handed Nixon the victory on a silver platter. He ended up winning the national popular vote by a landslide, beating his opponent by 18 million votes.

The event is widely considered to be the “original” October Surprise in US politics, and began to be referred to as such by US media and politicians alike in the early 1980s.

“Essentially it is something unexpected that happens very late, usually in October, in the campaign phase to influence the result,” explained Oscar Winberg, a specialist in US politics at Finland's Turku Institute for Advanced Studies.

Three types of surprises

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Three types of surprises

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