1968 United States presidential election (McCarthy for President)

The 1968 United States presidential election was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Democratic nominee, senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, narrowly defeated both the Republican nominee, former vice president Richard Nixon, 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. Hubert Humphrey, Robert F. Kennedy, and McCarthy emerged as the three major candidates in the Democratic primaries, until Kennedy was assassinated. His death after midnight on June 6 made a record of four assassinations in the 1960s. McCarthy narrowly beat Humphrey to win the Democratic nomination. Nixon entered the Republican primaries as the front-runner, defeating liberal New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, conservative governor of California Ronald Reagan, and other candidates to win his 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. Senator Eugene McCarthy won and secured the Democratic nomination, with McCarthy promising to end the Vietnam War and to support the civil rights movement.

The support of civil rights by the Johnson administration and by McCarthy lead 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 Nixon. Nixon chose to take advantage of Democratic infighting by running a more centrist platform aimed at attracting moderate voters as part of his "silent majority" who were alienated by both the liberal agenda that was advocated by Eugene McCarthy, and by the ultra-conservative viewpoints shared by George Wallace on race and civil rights, yet used coded language to combat Wallace in the Upper South, where these states were less extreme on the segregation issue. Nixon sought to restore law and order to the nation's cities and provide new leadership in the Vietnam War.

During most of the campaign, McCarthy trailed Nixon significantly in polls taken from late August to late September. In the final month of the campaign, McCarthy narrowed Nixon's lead after Wallace's candidacy collapsed and Johnson suspended bombing in the Vietnam War to appease the anti-war movement. McCarthy would gain in the polls after he and Nixon participated in a presidential debate, in which most considered McCarthy the winner. In the end, McCarthy was able to narrowly surpass Nixon on election day, winning the Electoral College by 278 votes, only 8 more than needed, as well as the popular vote by a narrow margin. This was the first presidential election after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had resulted in growing restoration 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.

Background
In the election of 1964, incumbent Democratic U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson won the largest popular vote landslide in U.S. presidential election history over Republican U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater. During the presidential term that followed, Johnson was able to achieve many political successes, including passage of his Great Society domestic programs (including "War on Poverty" legislation), landmark civil rights legislation, and the continued exploration of space. Despite these significant achievements, Johnson's popular support would be short-lived. Even as Johnson scored legislative victories, the country endured large-scale race riots in the streets of its larger cities, along with a generational revolt of young people and violent debates over foreign policy.

The Vietnam War was the primary reason for the precipitous decline of President Johnson's popularity. He had greatly escalated U.S. commitment that by late 1967, over 500,000 American soldiers were fighting in Vietnam. Draftees made up 42 percent of the military in Vietnam, but suffered 58% of the casualties, as nearly 1000 Americans a month were killed, and many more were injured. But resistance to the war rose as success seemed ever out of reach. The national news media began to focus on the high costs and ambiguous results of escalation, despite Johnson's repeated efforts to downplay the seriousness of the situation.

In early January 1968, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said the war would be winding down, claiming that the North Vietnamese were losing their will to fight. But, shortly thereafter, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, in which they and Communist forces of Vietcong undertook simultaneous attacks on all government strongholds across South Vietnam. Though the uprising ended in a U.S. military victory, the scale of the Tet offensive led many Americans to question whether the war could be "won", or was worth the costs to the U.S. In addition, voters began to mistrust the government's assessment and reporting of the war effort. The Pentagon called for sending several hundred thousand more soldiers to Vietnam. Johnson's approval ratings fell below 35%. The Secret Service refused to let the president visit American colleges and universities, and prevented him from appearing at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, because it could not guarantee his safety.