A presidential election was held in Indiana on November 5, 1968. The Republican ticket of the former vice president of the United States Richard Nixon and the governor of Maryland Spiro Agnew defeated the Democratic ticket of the incumbent vice president Hubert Humphrey and the junior U.S. senator from Maine Edmund Muskie. The American Independent ticket of the former governor of Alabama George Wallace and the chief of staff of the United States Air Force Curtis LeMay finished third. Nixon defeated Humphrey in the national election with 301 electoral votes.
Nixon ran unopposed in the May Republican primary, garnering just over half a million votes. The junior U.S. senator from New York Robert F. Kennedy won the Democratic primary with the overwhelming support of the state's Black voters. Kennedy's assassination a month later preceded the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which nominated Humphrey amidst protests against the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War.
Republicans were expected to flip Indiana four years after the Democratic landslide victory in 1964. Some polls showed Wallace running even with Humphrey in late October; however, by Election Day his share of the vote had fallen drastically, finishing at 11 percent. Wallace performed best in counties with large concentrations of Black voters, where white support for Wallace counterbalanced Black support for the Democratic ticket.
Nixon's victory was the first of ten consecutive Republican victories in the state, as Indiana would not vote for a Democratic candidate again until Barack Obama in 2008.
Background
Although it was considered a reliably Republican state, Indiana defected from the Republican column in 1964 to support the Democratic incumbent president Lyndon Johnson, who became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Indiana since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936. The defeated Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, faced powerful hostility from Northern and Southern Indiana that doomed his campaign in the state.
Wallace contested the 1964 Democratic Party presidential primaries and won significant support in Indiana counties that would soon become part of the Rust Belt. He nevertheless lost the Indiana primary by a greater than two-to-one margin to the governor of Indiana Matthew E. Welsh, who ran as a stalking horse for Johnson. Regression analysis conducted after the election revealed significant blue-collar support for Wallace, in contrast to Wisconsin, where middle class conservatism underlay Wallace's strong performance in the Democratic primary.
Republicans recovered some ground in the 1966 United States House of Representatives elections in Indiana. The party made significant gains in Southern Indiana and in the significantly German-American Central region, but did less well in Northern Indiana.
Primary elections
Democratic Party
Kennedy defeated the governor of Indiana Roger D. Branigin and the senior U.S. senator from Minnesota Eugene McCarthy in the Indiana Democratic primary. The senator had selected the Indiana primary as the first event of his candidacy after entering the race in March and hoped that a strong showing in the state would catapult him to the nomination, much as his brother John F. Kennedy's victory in the 1960 West Virginia Democratic primary had done eight years earlier.
Kennedy made his first appearance in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968, hours after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. Kennedy's speech to the crowd of mourners is sometimes credited for the peaceful response to King's assassination in Indianapolis, in contrast to riots in other major cities.
Branigin had initially agreed to run as a stalking horse for Johnson prior to the latter's withdrawal from the race in March. Some Kennedy backers believed their candidate could not prevail against the popular and erudite governor, and instead hoped for a strong second-place finish. Branigin's perceived apathy to the economic demands of the civil rights movement alienated Black organizations like the Radical Action Program, whose president, Charles Hendricks, was a fervent Kennedy supporter.
Kennedy's position as an anti-war candidate placed him in competition with McCarthy, who was known for his opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. Kennedy enjoyed the support of most of the Black community, while McCarthy was enormously popular with the student movement.
Kennedy ultimately did carry the state by a 12-point margin over Branigin, while McCarthy finished third with 27 percent of the vote. Kennedy was the overwhelming choice of Black voters, winning 90 percent of the vote in the Black-majority precincts of Gary, Indiana. In some Black-majority precincts in Indianapolis, Branigin and McCarthy together received only a few dozen votes. Kennedy carried nine of Indiana's 11 congressional districts, earning 56 of the state's 63 delegates to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Branigin carried two districts and seven delegates, while McCarthy received no delegates.
General election
Results by county
Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican
- Delaware
- Madison
- Spencer
- Starke
- Tippecanoe
- Vanderburgh
- Vigo
- Crawford
- Gibson
- Jefferson
- Knox
- Pike
- Posey
- Switzerland
- Adams
- Allen
- Bartholomew
- Benton
- Brown
- Blackford
- Carroll
- Cass
- Clay
- Clinton
- Daviess
- Decatur
- Dearborn
- DeKalb
- Elkhart
- Fayette
- Fountain
- Franklin
- Grant
- Greene
- Hancock
- Harrison
- Henry
- Howard
- Huntington
- Jackson
- Jay
- Jennings
- LaGrange
- LaPorte
- Lawrence
- Marshall
- Martin
- Marion
- Miami
- Montgomery
- Monroe
- Noble
- Ohio
- Orange
- Owen
- Parke
- Pulaski
- Putnam
- Randolph
- Ripley
- Shelby
- Tipton
- Wabash
- Warren
- Warrick
- Washington
- Wells
- White
- Whitley