U.S. presidential election, 1968

United States presidential election, 1968

← 1964 November 5, 1968 1972 →
All 538 electoral votes of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	60.9% 1.0 pp
Nominee Richard Nixon Hubert Humphrey George Wallace Party Republican Democratic American Independent Home state New York Minnesota Alabama Running mate Spiro Agnew Edmund Muskie Curtis LeMay Electoral vote 301 191 46 States carried 32 13 + DC 5 Popular vote 31,783,783 31,271,839 9,901,118 Percentage 43.4% 42.7% 13.5%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Nixon, blue denotes those won by Humphrey, orange denotes states won by Wallace, as well as a North Carolina faithless elector who cast his electoral vote for Wallace instead of Nixon. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election Lyndon B. Johnson Democratic Elected President Richard Nixon Republican

Lyndon B. Johnson
Democratic

Richard Nixon
Republican

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. 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 for 36 years.

The election year was tumultuous; it was marked by the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., subsequent race riots across the nation, the assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and widespread opposition to the Vietnam War across university campuses. Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had won a landslide victory for the Democratic Party four years earlier, declined to seek re-election amid growing discontent over the Vietnam War and his worse-than-expected showing in the New Hampshire primary. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was a scene of violent confrontations between police and anti-war protesters as the Democrats split into multiple factions.