List of 1968 Swing States

List Of 1968 Swing States

The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former Vice-President Richard Nixon, won the election over the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law and order to the nation's cities, torn by riots and crime.

Analysts have argued the election of 1968 is a realigning election as it permanently disrupted the New Deal Coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years. Coming four years after Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won in a historic landslide, the election saw the incumbent president forced out of the race and a Republican elected for the first time in twelve years. It was a wrenching national experience, conducted during a year of violence that included the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and subsequent race riots across the nation, the assasination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, widespread opposition to the Vietnam War across university campuses, and violent confrontations between police and anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention as the Democratic party split again and again.

The election featured the strongest third party effort since 1912 by former Alabama Governor George Wallace, a Democrat. Because Wallace's campaign opposed federal intervention in the South to end school segregation, he carried the Deep South and ran well in ethnic industrial districts in the North.

This was the last election in which New York had the most votes in the electoral college (43 votes). After the 1970 census, California gained the most electoral votes and has remained the most populous state since then.

This is the latest election where a presidential ticket won without carrying the vice presidential candidate's home state.