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.
Alaska was won by Richard Nixon (R-New York) with 45.3 percent of the popular vote against incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota) with 42.6 percent. 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. 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 oriented 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.
Results
Boroughs and Census Areas that flipped from Democratic to Republican
- Aleutians East Census Area
- Aleutians West Census Area
- Anchorage
- Lake & Peninsula Borough
- Bristol Bay Borough
- Dilingham Census Area
- Kodiak Island Borough
- Northwest Arctic Borough
- Yukon–Koyukuk Census Area
- Fairbanks North Star
- Southeast Fairbanks Census Area
- Denali Borough
- Matanuska-Susitna Borough
- Haines Borough
- Wrangell
- Ketchikan Gateway Borough
- Valdez–Cordova Census Area
Analysis
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. 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. This was the last time Alaska voted to the left of Iowa until 2024.
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. In fact, in Kenai Peninsula Borough, Wallace managed to receive over twenty percent of the vote.
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 and Oklahoma, behind 13.25 percent in Nevada and 12.55 percent in Idaho.