The 1968 United States presidential election in Virginia took place on November 5, 1968. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1968 United States presidential election. Virginia voters chose twelve electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president of the United States.

For over sixty years Virginia had had the most restricted electorate in the United States due to a cumulative poll tax and literacy tests. Virginia would be almost entirely controlled by the conservative Democratic Byrd Organization for four decades, although during the Organization’s last twenty years of controlling the state it would direct many Virginia voters away from the national Democratic Party due to opposition to black civil rights and to the fiscal liberalism of the New Deal. After the Twenty-Fourth Amendment and Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections the state’s electorate would substantially expand since the lower classes were no longer burdened by poll taxes. At the same time, the postwar Republican trend of the Northeast-aligned Washington D.C. suburbs, which had begun as early as 1944, would accelerate and become intensified by the mobilisation of working-class Piedmont whites against a national Democratic Party strongly associated with black interests.

Predictions
The following newspapers gave these predictions about how Virginia would vote in the 1968 presidential election:

Analysis
Virginia was won by Republican nominee and former Vice President Richard Nixon of California with 43.41 percent of the vote, against incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota with 32.53 percent and former Alabama Governor George Wallace who gained 23.55 percent. Nixon also won the national election with 43.42 percent of the vote. Regardless, all candidates had strong regional support in the state; Nixon's votes came mostly from Northern Virginia and the Appalachian Mountain areas, while Humphrey's votes were mainly from the Tidewater region and unionized coal counties in Southwest Virginia, which had both benefited from increased voter registration under the Voting Rights Act and been centres of opposition to the Byrd Organization in previous generations. Wallace received his core support in the Southern Virginia counties, where the core of Byrd machine power had been located.

, this is the last occasion when Powhatan County voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. It is also the last occasion when Lunenburg County, Mecklenburg County and Pittsylvania County have not voted for the Republican nominee. Essex County would not vote Democratic again until 1996, and James City County would not vote Democratic again until 2020.

Nixon’s victory was the first of ten consecutive Republican victories in the state, as Virginia would not vote for a Democratic candidate again until Barack Obama in 2008. Since 2008, Virginia has consistently voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. Nixon was the first Republican to ever carry Amherst and Craig counties, the first since Warren G. Harding in 1920 to carry Dickenson County and Russell County, and the first since Herbert Hoover in 1928 to carry Patrick County.

Campaign
51% of white voters supported Nixon, 28% supported Wallace, and 21% supported Humphrey.

Results

Results by county or independent city

Notes

References

Works cited
 

Virginia
1968
1968 Virginia elections