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The 1968 United States presidential election was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former vice president George Romney, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent President Lyndon Johnson, and the American Independent Party nominee, former Alabama governor George Wallace.

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 would foul his relationship with Johnson following an attempt to place a peace plank onto the Democratic platform, leading to Johnson announcing his candidacy during the convention, to much controversy. Romney entered the Republican Presidential Primaries as the frontrunner, fending off Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan for the party's nomination. Alabama's Democratic former governor, George Wallace, ran on the American Independent Party ticket, campaigning in favor of racial segregation on the basis of "state's rights". The election year was tumultuous and chaotic. It was marked by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in early April, and the subsequent 54 days of riots across the nation, by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in early June, and by widespread opposition to the Vietnam War across university campuses. President Johnson would win the Democratic nomination after 4 ballots, sparking the Johnson Birthday Riots.

The support of civil rights by the Johnson administration hurt Humphrey's image in the South, leading to the prominent Democratic governor of Alabama, George Wallace, to mount a third-party challenge against his own party to defend racial segregation on the basis of "state's rights". Wallace led a far-right American Independent Party attracting socially conservative voters throughout the South, and encroaching further support from white working-class voters in the Industrial North and Midwest who were attracted to Wallace's economic populism and anti-establishment rhetoric. In doing so, Wallace split the New Deal Coalition, winning over Southern Democrats, as well as former Goldwater supporters who preferred Wallace to Romney. Romney chose to take advantage of Democratic infighting by running a more centrist and dovish platform aimed at attracting moderate and liberal voters as part of his "moral majority" who were alienated by both the pro-war agenda that was advocated by President Johnson, and by the ultra-conservative viewpoints shared by George Wallace on race and civil rights. Romney sought to further Integration and Civil Rights, and to lessen U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War

During most of the campaign, Johnson trailed Romney significantly in polls taken from late August to early October, but would slightly narrow his lead afterJohnson suspended bombing in the Vietnam War. Despite the last-minute gesture to peace activists, Johnson would lose the election by a landslide, with George Romney winning the electoral college heavily, despite only winning the popular vote by just 6.5 points. This was the first presidential election after the 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.