1968 United States presidential election in New Mexico

1968 United States presidential election in New Mexico

← 1964 November 5, 1968 1972 →
 
Nominee Richard Nixon Hubert Humphrey George Wallace
Party Republican Democratic American Independent
Home state New York[a] Minnesota Alabama
Running mate Spiro Agnew Edmund Muskie S. Marvin Griffin
Electoral vote 4 0 0
Popular vote 169,692 130,081 25,737
Percentage 51.85% 39.75% 7.86%

County Results

President before election

Lyndon B. Johnson
Democratic

Elected President

Richard Nixon
Republican

The 1968 United States presidential election in New Mexico took place on November 5, 1968. All fifty states and The District of Columbia, were part of the 1968 United States presidential election. State voters chose four electors to represent them in the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

New Mexico had been a long-time political bellwether, having supported the winning candidate in every presidential election since statehood in 1912. However, a definite Republican trend was detectable in 1964, when Goldwater was able to win a vote share two percent above his national mean and Johnson feared losing traditionally Southern Democratic "Little Texas".[1]

The 1966 midterm elections saw the state join with larger "Sunbelt" dynamics and Democratic candidates for statewide offices would lose twelve percent or more of their previous vote share,[2] in the process showing that Hispanic candidates were becoming a liability in Albuquerque and the east due to considerable in-migration,[3] and legislative GOP percentages reached levels not observed for over four decades.[4] Local issues of public school finance and land-grant claims for the Hispanic and Native American populations of the state proved a further liability for the incumbent Democratic Party.[5] The issue of the stalemated Vietnam War was another problem for the Democratic Party in a state severely affected by poverty, and anti-war Eugene McCarthy gained substantial support among New Mexico Democrats before the assassination of Bobby Kennedy largely turned them toward eventual nominee Hubert Humphrey.

Incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey and segregationist American Independent Party candidate and former Governor of Alabama George Wallace campaigned in New Mexico during the autumn, whilst running mate Spiro Agnew did all the campaigning for Republican Richard Nixon in the state.[5] Despite his failure to visit, New Mexico was won by former Vice President Nixon by a 12-point margin against Humphrey.[6] Wallace, far from his base in the Deep South, did well among working and lower-middle class unionized workers[7] and farmers in the "Little Texas" region, but received some of his poorest national percentages in the north-central highland regions – Mora County gave Wallace his eleventh-smallest vote share of any county in the country. Nixon was the first Republican to carry Lea and Eddy counties since 1928.


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  1. ^ Johnson, Robert David; All the Way with LBJ: The 1964 Presidential Election, p. 168 ISBN 0521737524
  2. ^ Wolf, T. Phillip; 'The 1966 Election in New Mexico'; The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 20, No. 2, Part 2 (June 1967), pp. 586-592
  3. ^ Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 463 ISBN 978-0-691-16324-6
  4. ^ Phillips; The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 467
  5. ^ a b Wolf, T. Phillip; 'The 1968 Elections in New Mexico', The Western Political Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 3 (September 1969), pp. 510-516
  6. ^ "1968 Presidential General Election Results – New Mexico". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved February 12, 2018.
  7. ^ Converse, Philip E.; Miller, Warren E.; Rusk, Jerrold G. and Wolfe, Arthur C.; 'Continuity and Change in American Politics: Parties and Issues in the 1968 Election'; The American Political Science Review, vol. 63, no. 4 (December 1969), pp. 1083-1105

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