User:Sdgsfdehgrtsj/sandbox
46th quadrennial U.S. presidential election / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 1968 United States presidential election was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former vice president Richard Nixon, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent vice president Hubert Humphrey, and the American Independent Party nominee, Alabama Governor George Wallace. Analysts have argued the election of 1968 was a major realigning election as it permanently disrupted the New Deal coalition that had dominated presidential politics since 1932.
This is the user sandbox of Sdgsfdehgrtsj. A user sandbox is a subpage of the user's user page. It serves as a testing spot and page development space for the user and is not an encyclopedia article. Create or edit your own sandbox here. Other sandboxes: Main sandbox | Template sandbox Finished writing a draft article? Are you ready to request review of it by an experienced editor for possible inclusion in Wikipedia? Submit your draft for review! |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
538 members of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Turnout | 60.9%[1] 1.0 pp | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Nixon/Agnew, blue denotes those won by Humphrey/Muskie, and orange denotes those won by Wallace/LeMay, including a North Carolina faithless elector. Numbers indicate electoral votes cast by each state. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson had been the early front-runner for the Democratic Party's nomination, but he withdrew from the race after only narrowly winning the New Hampshire primary. Eugene McCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Humphrey emerged as the three major candidates in the Democratic primaries until Kennedy was assassinated. Humphrey won the nomination, sparking numerous anti-war protests. Nixon entered the Republican primaries as the front-runner, defeating Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and other candidates to win his party's nomination. Alabama's Democratic governor, George Wallace ran on the American Independent Party ticket, campaigning in favor of racial segregation.
The election year was tumultuous; it was marked by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in early April and subsequent riots across the nation, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in early June, and widespread opposition to the Vietnam War across university campuses. Nixon ran on a campaign to restore law and order to the nation's cities and provide new leadership in the Vietnam War. A year later, he would popularize the term "silent majority" to describe those he viewed as his target voters. Humphrey promised to continue Johnson's war on poverty and to support the civil rights movement. 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.
Despite winning the popular vote by a relatively small 511,944 votes over Democratic nominee Humphrey, Nixon won the Electoral College by a large margin, carrying most states outside the Northeast. Wallace won five states in the Deep South and ran well in some ethnic enclave industrial districts in the North; he is the most recent third party candidate to win one or more states.[2]
This was the first presidential election after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had resulted in growing restoration and enforcement of the franchise for racial minorities, especially in the South, where most had been disenfranchised since the turn of the century. Minorities in other areas also regained their ability to vote.[3]
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 that was not repeated until 2020, when Joe Biden was elected president.[4] Nixon was the last person to win an election while losing his home state (Nixon lost his home state of New York) until Donald Trump in 2016.