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1968 United States presidential election in Alaska

Main article: 1968 United States presidential election

The 1968 United States presidential election in Alaska took place on November 5, 1968, as part of the nationwide presidential election. Voters chose three representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

1968 United States presidential election in Alaska
← 1964 November 5, 1968 1972 →
Turnout49.9% (voting age)[1]
 
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 Curtis LeMay
Electoral vote 3 0 0
Popular vote 37,600 35,411 10,024
Percentage 45.28% 42.65% 12.07%
President before election

Lyndon Johnson
Democratic

Elected President

Richard Nixon
Republican

Alaska was won by Richard Nixon (R-New York[a]) with 45.3 percent of the popular vote against incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota) with 42.6 percent.[2] Nixon ultimately won the national vote as well, defeating Humphrey and becoming the next President. Former and future Governor George Wallace (D-Alabama) ran under the American Independent Party ticket, which favored continuing racial segregation within public schools in addition to most other areas of society throughout the Southern United States.

Wallace received over 12% of the vote in Alaska, unusually well for a state so far removed from his strongholds in the Deep South.[3] This would begin Alaska's reputation as a state where third party candidates of differing political persuasions do relatively well.

In Alaska, voters were more concerned with Alaska orientated issues rather than those seen in the continental United States. The 1968 elections held in Alaska had higher levels of turnout than previous elections when it was a state.[4]

Results

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1968 United States presidential election in Alaska[2]
Party Candidate Votes Percentage Electoral votes
Republican Richard Nixon 37,600 45.28% 3
Democratic Hubert Humphrey 35,411 42.65% 0
American Independent George Wallace 10,024 12.07% 0
Totals 83,035 100.00% 3

Boroughs and Census Areas that flipped from Democratic to Republican

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Analysis

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Alaska has only voted Democratic once, and that was in the previous 1964 election for incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson, who did not run for re-election; nonetheless, during the state's first four presidential elections Alaska was little or no more Republican than the nation at-large.[5] Nixon's 45.28 percent stood 1.86 percent above his national figure and Humphrey's 42.65 percent was a trifling 0.07 percent below his national total. This is the last time Democrats carried Kenai Peninsula and Petersburg.[6]

Despite Alaska lying at the opposite end of the country from Wallace's support base in the Deep South, he did not fare badly in the relatively heavily populated areas of Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, and the Susitna Valley: indeed in Kenai Peninsula Borough Wallace received over twenty percent of the vote.[3]

Wallace's 12.07 percent of Alaska's vote was 1.46 percent below his percentage for the nation at large, but nonetheless his third-greatest outside antebellum slave states[b] and Oklahoma,[c] behind 13.25 percent in Nevada and 12.55 percent in Idaho.[6]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b Although Nixon was born in California and although he served as a U.S. Senator from California, in 1968 his official state of residence was New York, because he moved there to practice law after his defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election. During his first term as president, he re-established his residency in California. Consequently, most reliable reference books list Nixon's home state as New York in the 1968 election and his home state as California in the 1972 (and 1960) election.
  2. ^ Wallace's share here was also larger than his 9.62 percent in the border state of West Virginia.
  3. ^ Oklahoma was not a state until 1907 but did have slavery as a territory before 1865.

References

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  1. ^ "Population Estimates and Projections" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. March 1972. Retrieved August 10, 2024.
  2. ^ a b "Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 5, 1968" (PDF). Clerk.house.gov. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
  3. ^ a b Popular vote at 1968 presidential election: Percent for George C. Wallace
  4. ^ Chinn, Ronald E. (September 1969). "The 1968 Election in Alaska". The Western Political Quarterly. 22 (3): 456–461.
  5. ^ Counting the Votes; Alaska Archived 2017-01-07 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ a b David Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections; 1968 Presidential General Election Data - National
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