Who would be more likely to win the 1968 election?

  • Robert F. Kennedy

    Votes: 57 72.2%
  • Ronald Reagan

    Votes: 22 27.8%

  • Total voters
    79

Bomster

Banned
Which is why Pat Brown thought he never could be elected Governor of California in 1966 (a state which after all had overwhelmingly rejected Goldwater two years earlier). Geoffrey Kabaservice has shown how Reagan was surprisingly successful in getting conservative and moderate California Republicans to cooperate in electing him in 1966. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZlRpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA173 Reagan's supporters in 1968, like William Rusher, were well aware of the importance that he not be seen as another Barry Goldwater, and were planning, for example, for him to have a moderate running mate; see my post at https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ronald-reagan-in-1968.443980/#post-17038433 Then too there is the fact that even when Reagan said things as extreme as Goldwater, they somehow didn't seem extreme, thanks to the affable, aw-shucks way he said them.

However, all that is almost beside the point. My point was not that Reagan was in the abstract as strong a candidate as Nixon but that Wallace might not run if Reagan were the candidate and that might more than make up for Reagan's weaknesses.
What makes you think Wallace still wouldn’t run? Why did Wallace run in the first place IOTL?
 
With the Democratic Convention in the last week of August 1968 the only polls that would matter is the head to head matchup between the theoretical Democratic nominee and who ever nominated by the Republicans.
With most of the delegates chosen in caucuses and not pledge formally to any candidate then which ever candidate would be the best one to carry their state would be their choice.
With that in mind the party bosses are going to look at the national polls of a Reagan-Humphrey matchup vs a Reagan-Kennedy matchup and look at polls in their own States too.
The wildcard is will Wallace sit out this election or is he too committed to stop?
The Reagan of 1968 was much different then the Reagan of 1984, the Reagan of 1968 was more willing to use code words and dog whistles more blatantly.
 

Bomster

Banned
Just what would Wallace's ideological complaint about Reagan be? Reagan (unlike Nixon) had opposed both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ronald_Reagan#Civil_rights

If Wallace didn't run against Goldwater in 1964, why would he do so against Reagan in 1968?
So basically instead of Wallace sweeping the Deep South Reagan sweeps it instead?

Here's a map I made of a contest between Robert Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in 1968. Reagan sweeps the South and the republican west but Kennedy, with his appeal to the working class, progressives, and minorities, edges out in the industrial Midwest, east coast (except New Jersey, which I'm not too sure about considering it's high population of possible Kennedy-voters versus Reagan-suburban voters), and wins the election by taking California, a state that is not very fond of it's governor.

Overall it would still be a very close race.

EV Results:
Kennedy/Sanford - 278 EV
Reagan/Percy - 260 EV

genusmap.php
 
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