Describing the 1962 California GOP gubernatorial primary between Richard Nixon and Joe Shell, Rick Perlstein writes (p. 60):
Nixon’s primary victory over Shell was humiliatingly close.
Shell did hurt Nixon by undermining his conservative support and forcing him to divert resources to the primary contest. But Nixon won 1,285,151 votes (66.19 percent of the major-candidate vote) to Shell’s 656,542 (33.81 percent). This 2-1 margin was not “humiliatingly close.”