Wallace has a better running mate

In September 1968, Wallace was getting 20% in the polls. In after October, after he named Curtis Lemay as his choice for Vice President he dropped to 15%. In the election he earned 13.5 5. What if one of the Southern Congressman or Senators he asked had said yes?. If you increase Wallace's percentage by a third he would have won Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. The Electoral College would have been Nixon 255 Humphrey 191 and Wallace 92. Nobody would have won. The election would have gone to the House. Wallace said in that case, he would have made a deal. His conditions would have been agreeing not enforce federal Civil Rights laws. I am thinking Nixon makes the deal. He would have started his presidency under a cloud. Particularly because he would have lost the popular votes. I am thinking Nixon 38% Humphrey 40% and Wallace 20%. I think after pressure from Congress and the public, Nixon goes back on his promise by 1970. This helps Humphrey as he tries for the 1972 Democratic nomination. Even if McGovern is the nominees, there so much anger at Nixon, he does better. I'll say Nixon 58% McGovern 40%. In addition to Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, McGovern wins Rhode Island, Minnesota and South Dakota.
 
Strom Thurmond would be the obvious congressman, but the question is how in the hell does Wallace get Thurmond to run as his mate? Could Wallace potentially allow for a Thurmond/Wallace ticket?
 
Well first of all, if Nixon made that sort of deal, I think the backlash would be a lot greater than you described. He'd have a hard time getting a lot done in Washington, which would lead to a lot less popularity. And that's even if it works, compromising with Wallace could turn off some Liberal Republicans and Democrats might even win in that case.

I don't think he would, though. Not that he wouldn't be willing, but he'd much rather make a deal with Humphrey. And Humphrey and the Northern Democrats would eventually get Nixon elected, because they definitely don't want Nixon to go through Wallace. Particularly Humphrey, who's spent most of his political career fighting for civil rights. They work out a deal, and though some conservative Republicans might not like it, the loyal ones combined with Liberal Democrats will be more than enough to get Nixon elected.
 
The whole segregationist "deadlock the Electoral College and make a deal" idea, was clever but unworkable due to several unwritten rules or aspects of American politics.

Someone should write a book about clever attempts to game the Electoral College. The only ones which sort of worked were 1860 and 1876, with not very good consequences in both cases.

First, you need an Electoral College deadlock, which post 12th Amendment only has happened once, in 1824, when none of the candidates were really running a national campaign and there were still many cases of state legislatures choosing the electors. Its sort of like going into a poker hand depending on drawing an inside straight.

Second, the regional candidate has to be positioned closer to at least one of the two major party candidates than they are to each other, and still have a chance to make a deal with the other major party candidates. This is game theory. The conditions were not met in this case. Deals with Humphrey (or Truman or Kennedy) were just not there to be had by the segregationists, and the Republican candidates were closer to their Democratic rivals than to the segregationists.

Third, it would have been impossible to enforce any policy concessions once the President-elect is elected, since the Electoral College can't reconvene and take back an election. So there is no leverage.

There is also an obvious default among the major party electors to go with the popular vote/ electoral vote leader, and there is only wiggle room if these diverge. The major party candidates could also announce a deal where one party's electors vote for the other party's for President, and then this is reversed for Vice President. You may only need to coordinate with a couple of large states, say Texas and California. I don't think Nixon would have cared that much if Muskie was his Veep instead of Agnew, which would have been the likeliest arrangement.

Wallace had enough northern support that he could have tried to win outright, by running to the left on economics (while still being anti-bureaucrat), right on anything cultural and law and order, and then the segregationist stuff would still be a mess. Really, as with slavery, the best strategy for the survival of segregation would be to lie low and hope that the Yankees don't notice or get too worked up at what is going on in the South.
 
There is also an obvious default among the major party electors to go with the popular vote/ electoral vote leader, and there is only wiggle room if these diverge. The major party candidates could also announce a deal where one party's electors vote for the other party's for President, and then this is reversed for Vice President. You may only need to coordinate with a couple of large states, say Texas and California. I don't think Nixon would have cared that much if Muskie was his Veep instead of Agnew, which would have been the likeliest arrangement.
Good analysis, but one quibble: that part's wrong. According to the 12th Amendment, every state gets one vote once the EC is deadlocked, meaning getting all of California behind you is the exact same as getting all of Alaska behind you.

Which makes the "get Wallace behind Nixon" strategy even more suspect, because in most non-Southern States, either the Republicans or Democrats held only slim majorities in Congress. See the OTL Congressional makeup after the 1968 elections. Wallace and Nixon could reliably get solid Republican States plus the South behind him, but if it's know that Nixon is conniving with Segragationists, the slim GOP Majorities in States like Minnesota, Wisconsin, California, and elsewhere won't last. And then there's Liberal Republicans in New England who could guarantee two states to the Democrats. Even assuming most stay loyal, there's no guaranteeing the Democratic House Members in less radical Southern States will actually stomach voting for Nixon, particularly not in the Upper South or Texas. And then there's considering the fact that Humphrey just won the popular vote.
 
Third party candidates almost always fade in the last weeks of the campaign, as the realization sets in that they cannot win. (Gary Johnson was in double digits in many polls in the summer and early autumn of 2016--and ended up getting 3.8 percent of the vote...) I doubt that the choice of Lemay had very much to do with Wallace's decline.

BTW, James Michener, who was a Humphrey elector form Pennsylvania, said that "if Nixon won the popular vote and led in electoral votes by a clear margin, I would recommend to my party leadership that they arrange a compromise with the Republicans and direct enough Democratic electors to swing to the Republican column to ensure Nixon's election." https://books.google.com/books?id=kS3ZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA14 Even if he were unable to convince the Demcoratic leadership of this, he could probably find enough Democratic electors willing to go along to prevent the race going into the House or Nixon being dependent on a "deal" with Wallace electors.
 
"According to the 12th Amendment, every state gets one vote once the EC is deadlocked, meaning getting all of California behind you is the exact same as getting all of Alaska behind you."

In the House of Representatives, yes. I was positing a scenario where Humphrey electors just vote for Nixon, or vice versa, once the two major party candidates announce on TV that they have reached a deal. Then the whole thing is wrapped up without Congress having to get involved other than to certify the vote.

While the electors vote in their state capitols and don't deliberate, an entire state delegation of electors can meet beforehand and co-ordinate, which happened this year with three faithless electors in Washington. Once Johnson and Humphrey announce that they want the Texas electors to vote for Nixon, for example, and Nixon announces he wants the California or Ohio electors to vote for Muskie for VP, things are pretty much set and everyone else can just vote for the ticket that has carried their state, as usual. This would be reversed if its Humphrey who has the dual pluralities. You could also do fancy things by having electors vote for a different VP candidate than the nominated ones, such as the other major party candidate, but that would be much harder to co-ordinate.
 
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