 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 County Results
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.jpg)
.jpg)
_(3x4).jpg)
| Elections in New Mexico |
|---|
 |
The 1968 United States presidential election in New Mexico took place on November 5, 1968. All fifty states and The District of Columbia, were part of the 1968 United States presidential election. State voters chose four electors to represent them in the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
New Mexico had been a long-time political bellwether, having supported the winning candidate in every presidential election since statehood in 1912. However, a definite Republican trend was detectable in 1964, when Goldwater was able to win a vote share two percent above his national mean and Johnson feared losing traditionally Southern Democratic "Little Texas".[1]
The 1966 midterm elections saw the state join with larger "Sunbelt" dynamics and Democratic candidates for statewide offices would lose twelve percent or more of their previous vote share,[2] in the process showing that Hispanic candidates were becoming a liability in Albuquerque and the east due to considerable in-migration,[3] and legislative GOP percentages reached levels not observed for over four decades.[4] Local issues of public school finance and land-grant claims for the Hispanic and Native American populations of the state proved a further liability for the incumbent Democratic Party.[5] The issue of the stalemated Vietnam War was another problem for the Democratic Party in a state severely affected by poverty, and anti-war Eugene McCarthy gained substantial support among New Mexico Democrats before the assassination of Bobby Kennedy largely turned them toward eventual nominee Hubert Humphrey.
Incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey and segregationist American Independent Party candidate and former Governor of Alabama George Wallace campaigned in New Mexico during the autumn, whilst running mate Spiro Agnew did all the campaigning for Republican Richard Nixon in the state.[5] Despite his failure to visit, New Mexico was won by former Vice President Nixon by a 12-point margin against Humphrey.[6] Wallace, far from his base in the Deep South, did well among working and lower-middle class unionized workers[7] and farmers in the "Little Texas" region, but received some of his poorest national percentages in the north-central highland regions – Mora County gave Wallace his eleventh-smallest vote share of any county in the country. Nixon was the first Republican to carry Lea and Eddy counties since 1928.
