Claim: Richard Nixon was President of the United States.

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 . 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 .   The election year was tumultuous ; it was marked by the assassination of Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. , subsequent King assassination riots across the nation , the assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and widespread opposition to the Vietnam War across university campuses . Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson , who had won a landslide victory for the Democratic Party four years earlier , declined to seek re-election amid growing discontent over the Vietnam War and his worse-than-expected showing in the New Hampshire primary . The 1968 Democratic National Convention was a scene of violent confrontations between police and anti-war protesters as the Democrats split into multiple factions .   Richard Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law and order to the nation 's cities and provide new leadership in the Vietnam War . A year later , he would popularize the term `` silent majority '' to describe those he viewed as being his target voters . Nixon won the popular vote by a narrow margin of 0.7 percentage points , but won easily in the Electoral College , 301 -- 191 . The election also featured a strong third party effort by former Alabama Governor George Wallace , a vocal advocate for racial segregation in public schools . He carried five states in the Deep South and ran well in some ethnic enclave industrial districts in the North .   This was the first election after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 , which had led to mass enfranchisement of racial minorities throughout the country , especially in the South . It was the last election in which New York had the most votes in the electoral college -LRB- 43 votes -RRB- . After the 1970 census , California gained the most electoral votes and has remained the most populous state since then .   As of the 2016 presidential election , this is the last election in which a major party nominated as its presidential candidate a previously defeated presidential candidate -LRB- with respect to Nixon 's loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960 -RRB- , as well as the last one in which a non-major party candidate won at least one state .