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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. Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law and order to the nation's cities, torn by riots and crime. 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. Coming four years after Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won in a historic landslide, the election saw the incumbent president forced out of the race and a Republican elected for the first time in 12 years. It was a wrenching national experience, conducted during a year of violence that included the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and subsequent race riots across the nation, the assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, widespread opposition to the Vietnam War across university campuses, and violent confrontations between police and anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention as the Democratic party split again and again. The election featured the strongest third party effort since the 1912 presidential election by former Alabama Governor George Wallace. Wallace was a vocal advocate for racial segregation in public schools - a position which gained much popularity in his home state, and across much of the Deep South. Because Wallace's campaign opposed federal intervention in the South to end school segregation, he carried the Deep South and ran well in ethnic enclave industrial districts in the North. This was the last election in which New York had the most votes in the electoral college (43 votes). After the 1970 census, California gained the most electoral votes and has remained the most populous state since then. This was also the last election where at least one state was carried by a third-party candidate. (John Hospers received an electoral vote from Virginia in the next election but did not carry any states.) This is the most recent election where the victorious national ticket failed to carry the vice presidential candidate's home state. It is also the first (and as of 2012 only) election where an incumbent vice president ran against a former vice president for the presidency. ==Historical background== In the election of 1964, incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson won the largest popular vote landslide in U.S. Presidential election history over Republican Barry Goldwater. During the presidential term that followed, Johnson was able to achieve many political successes, including the passage of his sweeping Great Society domestic programs (also known as the "War on Poverty"), landmark civil rights legislation, and the continued exploration of space. At the same time, however, 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 emergence of the hippie counterculture, the rise of New Left activism, and the emergence of the Black Power movement exacerbated social and cultural clashes between classes, generations, and races. Every summer since 1964, major cities erupted in massive race riots that left hundreds dead or injured and destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars in property. Adding to the national crisis, on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, igniting further mass rioting and chaos, including Washington, D.C., where there was rioting within just a few blocks of the White House and machine guns were stationed on the Capitol steps to protect it.〔Thomas Adams Upchurch, ''Race relations in the United States, 1960-1980'' (2008) p. 7-50〕 The most important reason for the precipitous decline of President Johnson's popularity was the Vietnam War, which he greatly escalated during his time in office. 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. Johnson's position was particularly damaged when the national news media began to focus on the high costs and ambiguous results of escalation, despite his repeated efforts to downplay the seriousness of the situation. In early January 1968, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stated that the war would be winding down as the North Vietnamese were losing their will to fight, but shortly thereafter, they launched the Tet Offensive, in which the North Vietnamese and Communist Vietcong forces launched simultaneous attacks on all government strongholds in South Vietnam. The Tet episode led many Americans to ponder whether the war was winnable or worth it. In addition, they felt they could not trust their 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%, and the Secret Service refused to let the president make public appearances on the campuses of American colleges and universities, due to his extreme unpopularity among college students. The Secret Service also prevented Johnson from appearing at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, because it could not guarantee his safety from assassination. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United States presidential election, 1968」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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