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The Democrats, of course, had substantial support from numerous dissidents who had sworn after the Chicago convention that they would never vote for Humphrey. As the campaign wore on, they evolved a sort of tentative sympathy and affection for the Vice President that was only sharpened by their accumulating distaste for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. In the last month of the campaign, former Mc-Carthy workers, especially those old enough to recall Humphrey's earlier, fiery days in the Senate, began soliciting support and wearing H.H.H. buttons. They even became intolerant of McCarthyites who refused to join them. Some question remained of how badly Humphrey was hurt by dissident Democrats who stayed away from the polls as a protest. But the nonvote was not the significant factor. If the election did not represent a triumph of the New Politics, it was still the most massive single exercise of participatory democracy in the nation's history.