General election campaign

Humphrey opened his campaign on Labor Day in New York City. He urged Senate ratification of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, chiding Nixon for advocating delay. The confident Nixon, who launched his crisply organized campaign in Chicago a few days later, wanted to reassess the “posture and intentions of the Soviet Union” in light of that country’s invasion of Czechoslovakia (see Prague Spring) before endorsing the treaty.

For the first month of the campaign, Nixon seemed to be the only American listening to his rival. Wherever Humphrey went, he was drowned out by hecklers who accused him of following President Johnson’s policies and whose thunderous chants made it impossible for audiences to hear the candidate. In dealing with the important “law and order” issue, Nixon called Humphrey “tragically naive.” Humphrey, who as mayor of Minneapolis had rehabilitated an outmoded and corrupt police force, dealt with the problem by advocating federal aid for improving the salaries, training, and equipment of police. He spoke of “order and justice” instead of “law and order.” Agnew, talking “law and order,” rebuffed Republican colleagues who urged him to substitute “order with justice.” The Maryland governor’s rhetoric got him into trouble repeatedly. He called Humphrey “squishy soft on communism” and used derogatory terms such as “Polack” and “fat Jap” to refer to ethnic minorities.

Muskie concentrated his campaign largely on crime, the Wallace candidacy, and Vietnam. He was becoming better known and appeared to be adding strength to the Democratic ticket. That strength was needed. During the early part of the campaign, Humphrey trailed Nixon badly in the polls. The Nixon campaign appeared to run effortlessly, on a five-day week that left the candidate free to relax on weekends at Key Biscayne, Florida. Not so for Humphrey, who was angered and frustrated at his inability to penetrate the sound barrier raised by his ever-present hecklers and also depressed by the polls. But at last his campaign organization began to hum. Humphrey pledged, if elected, to stop bombing North Vietnam as “an acceptable risk for peace.” Muskie invited a heckler to the platform to air his views. Young people began to listen, and hecklers were shouted down by growing Humphrey crowds.

George Wallace was nominated as the presidential candidate of the newly formed American Independent Party. He had no running mate until October, when he selected retired air force general Curtis LeMay. But Wallace hardly seemed to need a running mate. He had one speech, which the faithful received joyously. His appeal went beyond the South, finding some supporters in Boston and New York as well. A Southern firebrand, Wallace railed against “pointy-head intellectuals” and anarchists and for “law and order.” Until the very end of the campaign, the polls indicated that he had the support of about 20 percent of the electorate.

By mid-October the Humphrey campaign began to catch fire. The candidate’s ebullience, which had been submerged by jeers and inattention in September, resurfaced, and he began campaigning with a zesty style. The polls began to turn around. As the Republican campaign sailed on its serenely even keel of dignified confidence, Nixon’s standing in the polls hardly wavered. Neither did Humphrey’s; he remained near the midpoint between Nixon and Wallace until late October. Then Humphrey began to climb, cutting into both Wallace and undecided votes.

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Nixon, who had not been on a major television interview program in two years, consented to appear on CBS’s Face the Nation two Sundays before the election and on NBC’s Meet the Press a week later. On the CBS show he maintained his composure and sidestepped difficult questions with ease. On Meet the Press he comfortably handled a series of uncommonly benign queries that enabled him to state his position on key issues with calm and statesmanlike dignity.

A week before election day, McCarthy diffidently suggested that Humphrey’s position had come close enough to his own to make it possible for him to vote for Humphrey, and he hoped his supporters would too.

On Thursday, October 31, five days before the election, President Johnson lobbed the last bombshell into election year 1968: the following morning U.S. bombing would stop everywhere over North Vietnam. After weeks of negotiation, North Vietnam had agreed to substantive peace talks in Paris. Rumors of such progress had been current for months. In September Nixon had said he knew the president to be driving hard for a break in the negotiations—and not just to aid Humphrey’s campaign. Nixon handled the new situation in a measured and dignified manner, although some of his supporters saw the move as politically motivated.

Humphrey’s last-minute surge, although considerable, came too late to save his campaign. The precise measure of Nixon’s victory was unclear for a week after the polls closed, but its general dimensions were apparent within a day or two. The Republicans carried 32 states, with 302 electoral votes (one elector pledged to Nixon voted for Wallace, however); 270 were needed to win. Humphrey won 13 states and Washington, D.C., with 191 electoral votes. Wallace carried 5 states, with 45 electoral votes.

Overall, Nixon won 43.4 percent of the vote to Humphrey’s 42.7 percent, and Wallace captured 13.5 percent. Nixon’s margin nearly quadrupled that by which John Kennedy had defeated Nixon in 1960, but it was still the second smallest margin in 76 years. The Republicans gained a few seats in the House of Representatives and five in the Senate, but the Democrats retained a majority in both houses—thus making Nixon the first president since Zachary Taylor in 1848 who would not have his party in the majority in either house of Congress at the beginning of his first term.

For the results of the previous election, see United States presidential election of 1964. For the results of the subsequent election, see United States presidential election of 1972.

Results of the 1968 election

The results of the 1968 U.S. presidential election are provided in the table.