FBI Director James Comey’s revelation on Friday that the bureau was reviewing new evidence related to a previously completed investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices roiled the presidential race just 11 days before Election Day. It also provided the latest chapter in a long history of October Surprises.
Republicans seized on Mr. Comey’s notification to Congress to attempt to reinvigorate Donald Trump’s campaign, while Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats challenged the Federal Bureau of Investigation to release the pertinent evidence promptly.
The October Surprise has been a staple of American politics for decades. The phrase refers to an 11th-hour revelation or turn of events that, whether intentionally or not, has the potential to shift the direction of the presidential race. Sometimes October Surprises appear to have altered the course of a campaign, sometimes not.
Here are notable examples:
1972
In October 1972, Richard Nixon was coasting to re-election against Democratic South Dakota Sen. George McGovern; polling showed him leading by as much as 26 points that month.
Though his campaign seemed little in need of a late boost, on Oct. 26, Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger declared “peace is at hand” in Vietnam, and that a final cease-fire agreement with the North Vietnamese communists could be reached within days.
Rather than applaud the Nixon administration, Mr. McGovern credited the anti-war movement for the development. He questioned why it had taken Nixon four years to “put an end to this tragic war” and declined to speculate on the effect on his chances at winning the election.
Mr. Nixon won re-election in one of the most lopsided landslides in U.S. history. And peace wasn’t, in fact, at hand. The war continued another 2½ years, ending with the fall of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, in April 1975.
1980
The release of U.S. hostages in Iran was the October Surprise that never surprised.
In November 1979, Iranian student activists stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. The Americans were still held a year later. In the thick of President Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign against former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, Mr. Reagan warned repeatedly that Mr. Carter would unveil an “October Surprise” to turn the election around at the last minute, possibly securing the release of some or all of the hostages.
“Presidents can make things happen, you know,” Mr. Reagan said in a Florida television interview on Oct. 10. In an interview with the Associated Press earlier that month, he said he was “bracing myself for an October Surprise,” noting the Iranians “are not exactly supporters of mine.”
Ultimately, the hostages weren’t freed before the election. Mr. Reagan won a resounding victory—and the hostages were released the day he was sworn into office.
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