The 1968 United States presidential election was the 46th quadrennial presidential election. The Republican nominee, former vice president Richard Nixon, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent vice president Hubert Humphrey, and the American Independent Party nominee, Governor George Wallace. Nixon won a plurality of the popular vote by a narrow margin, but won by a large margin in the Electoral College. Nixon’s victory marked the start of a period of Republican dominance in presidential elections.
About 1968 United States presidential election in brief
The 1968 United States presidential election was the 46th quadrennial presidential election. The Republican nominee, former vice president Richard Nixon, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent vice president Hubert Humphrey, and the American Independent Party nominee, Governor George Wallace. The election year was marked by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and subsequent riots across the nation. It was the first presidential election after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had led to mass enfranchisement of racial minorities throughout the country. The primary reason for the precipitous decline of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s popularity was the Vietnam War, which he greatly escalated during his time in office. Nixon won a plurality of the popular vote by a narrow margin, but won by a large margin in the Electoral College, carrying most states outside of the Northeast. Nixon’s victory marked the start of a period of Republican dominance in presidential elections, as Republicans won four of the next five elections. In addition, he became the first non-incumbent vice president to be elected president, a feat which would only be duplicated in 2020 by Joe Biden. In the election of 1964, incumbent Democrat United States President Lyndon Johnson won the largest popular vote landslide in U.S. Presidential election history over Republican United States Senator Barry Goldwater. The election of 1968 was a major realigning election as it permanently disrupted the New Deal coalition that had dominated presidential politics since 1932.
In early 1968, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stated that the North Vietnamese were losing their will to fight, but shortly thereafter they launched the Tet Offensive in which they launched simultaneous attacks on all government strongholds in the South. The Tet Offensive led many Americans to ponder whether the war was winding down, but it would be shortly thereafter that they would be asked to play a role in deciding whether or not the war would be won or lost. In late 1968, over 500,000 American soldiers were killed in Vietnam, but the military suffered nearly 58% of the casualties as 1000 Americans a month were killed and many more injured when the media began to focus on the high costs and ambiguous results of the war. At the same time, the country endured large-scale race riots in the streets of its larger cities, along with a generational revolt of young people and violent debates over foreign policy. Adding to the national crisis, on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Rev. Martin LutherKing Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, igniting further mass rioting and chaos, including Washington, D. C., where there was rioting within just a few blocks of the White House and machine guns were stationed on the Capitol steps to protect it. Humphrey trailed significantly in polls taken in late August but narrowed Nixon’s lead after Wallace’s candidacy collapsed and Johnson suspended bombing in the Vietnam war. Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law and order to the nation’s cities and provide new leadership in the Vietnamese War.
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