What really happened in 1968

The 1968 election is one of the most misunderstood elections in the history of the United States. The common narrative is that Hubert Humphrey lost because he supported the Vietnam War and those radical hippies didn’t vote for him. I’m here to prove that that is not what actually happened. Plus, Nixon didn’t truly oppose the war, so this argument doesn’t make sense.

First of all, let’s talk about California which was the second largest state. 1964 was the only election between Roosevelt and Clinton where it voted for the Democrat. It was only barely won by Nixon, without a majority. 1968 was the second-worst performance by a Republican between 1944 and 1992. Democrats did relatively well in California for this era. LBJ’s Great society plan in 1964 was the only time a Democrat won a majority of the vote between 1944 and 1996. Another point is that in California had a very progressive Republican Senator who voted for the majority of the Great Society. He was defeated by a conservative Republican in the primary, and then the California Senate seat flipped to a Democrat. Basically, a progressive Republican was narrowly defeated by a Goldwater Republican, which gave the seat to the Democrats. That seat has been held by the Democrats ever since.

Nixon clearly did not win California because he presented a more conservative vision. Neither did he win because of opposition to the Vietnam War. There’s something else going on.

We see the same pattern in Oregon which was reliably Republican between 1944 to 1992 except for 1964 when it voted for Johnson’s Great Society. Oregon wouldn’t give the majority of its votes to a Democrat again until 2004. Their existing senator was one of only two Democrats to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. He lost to a Republican who supported the war. Humphrey clearly did not lose Oregon because he supported the Vietnam War.

Illinois was a critical loss to the Democrats. The liberal Republican Everett Dickson was running for reelection in the Senate. He was critical in breaking the Southern Filibuster of the Civil Rights Act. He won. Again, just like in California, Republicans did not win the Senate election because they had a conservative person running, that urban legend is completely contrary to the facts on the ground.

Likewise, let’s look at actual approval polls on the Vietnam War from Gallup:

Source: Gallup

Year 1 is 1964, so the peak of Vietnam importance was in 1966.  By the time we get to 1968 (year 5) Only around 43% of Americans think Vietnam was the most important problem, fewer than the Democratic victory in 1966.

We also see that anti-Vietnam War protesters protested both major party candidates in the general election. It was not a wedge issue after the primary.

So why do we see Humphrey do so poorly while the Senators who supported the Great Society and the Vietnam War kept winning the general elections?

It’s actually very simple. Nixon had been campaigning through the primaries while Humphrey had not announced his campaign until April while Richard Nixon had started his campaign in February. Nixon had 2 more months of campaigning and that is a significant advantage in political campaigns. The other issue is that Humphrey flip flopped on Vietnam in September and said he was against the war, but that wasn’t enough to bring voters back.

So we have two more months of campaigning plus a stable message which didn’t change near the end of the election for Nixon, so voters took him more seriously. Humphrey lost his chance to focus the campaign on the very real successes of the Johnson administration in the beginning of 1968.

In regards to the flip flopping, it is ok if politicians change their stance over a long period of time, but changing your stance on a major issue in the middle of a campaign only in order to gain political support has always made politicians appear disingenuous to voters. Especially when you won almost no votes from average American voters in the primary elections.

A flip-flopping establishment candidate who came last in the primary became the nominee because of party insiders.

Who would expect that would fail to attract voters in the general election?

Consequences

As a consequence of the failure by the Democrats to win the Presidency in 1968 and 1972, the 1976 primary election included primaries in all 50 states. Super delegates still exist like they did in 1968 but we saw a total realignment of power in the primary system to include more delegates who are more or less bound to what voters choose in the primary. Problems still remain. The long period of time between the first and last primary means that a candidate who does well in the beginning of the 5 month long primary might not do well in the later states as more information comes out. Superdelegates (aka party insiders) still have power over the primary, although less than they did in 1968.

This is also good for the Democratic Party. In the primaries running from 1912-1972, when the general election candidate was not the victor of the popular vote in the primary, Democrats lost the general election every single time. There were only two instances when the winner of the popular vote was the general election candidate and did not win the presidency, those elections were 1928 and 1956. Every other time when the general election candidate was the same as the winner of the popular vote in the primary you saw the Democratic candidate become president. Since the reform, the Democrats have won the popular vote in the general election 8 out of 12 times. We have won half of the Presidential elections since this reform was passed due to the electoral college.

Year	Winner of popular vote	Winner of primary	Same candidate?	Won general popular?	Won electoral college?
1912	Wilson	Wilson	Yes	Yes	Yes
1916	Wilson	Wilson	Yes	Yes	Yes
1920	Palmer	Cox
1924	Gibbs	Davis
1928	Al Smith	Al Smith	Yes
1932	Roosevelt	Roosevelt	Yes	Yes	Yes
1936	Roosevelt	Roosevelt	Yes	Yes	Yes
1940	Roosevelt	Roosevelt	Yes	Yes	Yes
1944	Roosevelt	Roosevelt	Yes	Yes	Yes
1948	Truman	Truman	Yes	Yes	Yes
1952	Kefauver	Stevenson
1956	Stevenson	Stevenson	Yes
1960	Kennedy	Kennedy	Yes	Yes	Yes
1964	Johnson	Johnson	Yes	Yes	Yes
1968	McCarthy	Humphrey
1972	Humphrey	McGovern
1976	Carter	Carter	Yes	Yes	Yes
1980	Carter	Carter	Yes
1984	Mondale	Mondale	Yes
1988	Dukakis	Dukakis	Yes
1992	Clinton	Clinton	Yes	Yes	Yes
1996	Clinton	Clinton	Yes	Yes	Yes
2000	Gore	Gore	Yes	Yes
2004	Kerry	Kerry	Yes
2008	Obama	Obama	Yes	Yes	Yes
2012	Obama	Obama	Yes	Yes	Yes
2016	Clinton	Clinton	Yes	Yes
2020	Biden	Biden	Yes	Yes	Yes

It is obvious to me that having the Democratic candidate be the winner of the popular vote in the primary is good for the party.

The Nixon Administration significantly changed America. He made no efforts for peace in Vietnam, he started the War on Drugs and appointed conservative Supreme Court justices which significantly changed American politics to the present.

The 1968 election truly permanently changed American politics. The Democratic Party lurched to the left for the next 40 years with the rise of the New Democratic Caucus which has seen three presidents (Carter, Clinton, Biden) ascend to office, believing that the leftward shift of the Johnson Administration led to our loss in 1968.

I hope I have clearly shown in this article why I don’t believe it was Vietnam, nor was it the Civil Rights Acts which caused Nixon to win in the 1968 election. I think the evidence it has to do with how the Democratic candidate won in a corrupt bargain, he didn’t participate in the primaries meaning he wasn’t able to garner support and the party narrative had so very much changed in the primary that with an unclear message he failed to turnout voters in the general election.