The 1968 United States presidential election in Alabama was held on November 5, 1968.
In Alabama, voters voted for electors individually instead of as a slate, as in the other 49 states.
The 1960s had seen Alabama as the epicenter of the Civil rights movement, Civil Rights Movement, highlighted by numerous bombings by the Ku Klux Klan in "Bombingham", Birmingham police commissioner Bull Connor, Eugene "Bull" Connor's use of attack dogs against civil rights protesters, attacks on the Freedom Riders and Selma to Montgomery marches, Selma to Montgomery marchers, and first-term Governor George Wallace's Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, "stand in the door" against the desegregation of the University of Alabama. The state Democratic Party, which had remained closed to African-Americans two decades after ''Smith v. Allwright'' outlawed the white primary,
had by a five-to-one margin refused to pledge its 1964 electors to incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson, and no attempt was made to challenge this Wallace-sponsored Democratic slate with one loyal to the national party. Despite sponsoring the state Democratic slate, in the 1964 general election Wallace would back Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, who won almost seventy percent of Alabama's ballots against the state Democratic electors, for his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
George Wallace would build a Third party (United States), third party candidacy with his Right-wing populism, right-wing populist American Independent Party during the following two years, campaigning on opposition to desegregation, race riots, and the Counterculture of the 1960s, counterculture. However, with the state Democratic Party still refusing to integrate,
the national party made efforts to place its own electors on the Alabama ballot during 1967. As expected, Wallace won the state Democratic primary in May, and was listed as the “Democratic” candidate on the Alabama ballot.
National Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey was able, unlike Harry S. Truman 1948 presidential campaign, Harry S. Truman and outgoing President Johnson, to gain ballot access on electoral fusion, a fusion of the "Alabama Independent Democrat" and National Democratic Party of Alabama, National Democratic lines.
78% of white voters supported Wallace, 16% supported Nixon, and 4% supported Humphrey.
Predictions
Results
Results by presidential elector
Results by county
Analysis
Wallace won his home state in a landslide, receiving 65.86 percent of the vote to Democrat Hubert Humphrey's 18.72 percent, a 47.13 point margin. Republican Richard Nixon, while winning the election nationally, finished a distant third in Alabama with only 13.99 percent, gaining significant support only in a few northern counties with historical Union (American Civil War), Unionist sympathies and higher-income urban areas. Wallace's 65.86 percent of the popular vote would make Alabama not only his best performing state in the 1968 election, but the strongest performing state out of any candidate, with only Humphrey's performance 1968 United States presidential election in the District of Columbia, in Washington D.C. being stronger.
Wallace won 64 of the state's 67 counties. As African-Americans in the South were slowly gaining the right to vote as a result of federal civil rights legislation passed in 1964 and 1965, Wallace's weakest region was Black Belt (region of Alabama), the Black Belt, where he won most counties with narrow majorities or pluralities.
[Phillips. ''The Emerging Republican Majority''; p. 258]
, this is the last election in which Mobile County, Alabama, Mobile County, Shelby County, Alabama, Shelby County, Baldwin County, Alabama, Baldwin County, Lee County, Alabama, Lee County, and Houston County, Alabama, Houston County were not carried by the Republican candidate,
[.] the last election in which the Republican candidate won the election without Alabama, and the last election in which Wilcox County, Alabama, Wilcox County, Lowndes County, Alabama, Lowndes County, and Bullock County, Alabama, Bullock County were not carried by the national Democratic candidate.
See also
*United States presidential elections in Alabama
Notes
References
Works cited
*
{{State results of the 1968 U.S. presidential election
1968 United States presidential election by state, Alabama
United States presidential elections in Alabama, 1968
1968 Alabama elections