Question for the board-whenever the topic of a hotly contested presidential election comes up, almost everyone immediately thinks of 1960 and 2000. But why is the 1968 presidential election not brought up or scrutinized as much? Nixon's popular vote margin over Humphrey was only slightly larger than his loss to Kennedy in 1960, and was actually smaller than Gore's margin over Bush in 2000. I watched the election returns on Youtube, and Humphrey actually had a very slight lead in the popular vote for a significant portion of the night. The close margin plus Nixon's machinations in the Chennault affair seem to me ample fodder for this to be a heavily discussed and contested election. But I hardly hear it brought up, or at least no where near as much as 1960 and 2000 are.
If I had to come up with an explanation myself, I guess that Nixon's margin in the EC was decisive enough (301-191) that it's not seen as a photo-finish in the same way that 1960 and 2000 are. Plus, 1960 has the intrigue of Daley rigging Illinois and 2000 of course has the drama in Florida. I don't know of there being similar drama with individual states in 1968. My counter-point to this theory though is that in 1960, even if Kennedy loses IL, he still wins the election. So Nixon would have needed to change 2 or 3 states to win, just like Humphrey in 1968. 2000 is really the only election in the last century that came down to one state.
Any thoughts on this?
If I had to come up with an explanation myself, I guess that Nixon's margin in the EC was decisive enough (301-191) that it's not seen as a photo-finish in the same way that 1960 and 2000 are. Plus, 1960 has the intrigue of Daley rigging Illinois and 2000 of course has the drama in Florida. I don't know of there being similar drama with individual states in 1968. My counter-point to this theory though is that in 1960, even if Kennedy loses IL, he still wins the election. So Nixon would have needed to change 2 or 3 states to win, just like Humphrey in 1968. 2000 is really the only election in the last century that came down to one state.
Any thoughts on this?