Voters
Converse et al (1969) assesses the significance of the 1968 presidential election. Many people were dissatisfied with Johnson but not with the Democratic Party. Their dissatisfaction was connected to the Vietnam War, civil rights, and law and order. Humphrey, the choice of an older generation, suffered from identification with the Johnson administration. Wallace attracted many Richard Nixon-bound Democrats and thus was a threat to Nixon. McCarthy's popularity in the New Hampshire primary was a nondifferentiated anti-Johnson vote from which many voters went to Wallace. These were not, however, the hard-core McCarthyite followers. Wallace's success was the result of the voter's identification with his stand on the primary issues - continuing segregation, getting tough in Vietnam, and law and order. Wallace's supporters were rural and small town residents in the South and skilled labor in the North. They were disgusted with public policy and were often alienated from politics. The Wallace candidacy helped to bend American politics and politicians to conservatism.
Read more about this topic: List Of 1968 Swing States
Famous quotes containing the word voters:
“My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The question for the country now is how to secure a more equal distribution of property among the people. There can be no republican institutions with vast masses of property permanently in a few hands, and large masses of voters without property.... Let no man get by inheritance, or by will, more than will produce at four per cent interest an income ... of fifteen thousand dollars] per year, or an estate of five hundred thousand dollars.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“In really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes,... it strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good or evil the great occasions in a nation’s history.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)