The fact that Richard Nixon won the1968 election by a narrow margin showed that the country was not united. Americans wished Johnson had opposed him. most Americans wanted a Democrat in office. there was poor voter turnout.

The final stage of the 1968 presidential contest resembled the Trump–Clinton battle in significant ways. By the end of September, Richard Nixon had maintained a significant lead for months. Though he’d had his own party unity issues in nailing down the GOP nomination, he faced an opponent with intense intra-party opposition, a funding disadvantage, perceived organizational incompetence, and a miasma of pessimism. Humphrey held little if any allegiance from antiwar Democrats after the Chicago convention with its angry cops clubbing peace demonstrators and reporters alike. And he was losing millions of ancestral Democrats as well to the racist demagogue Wallace, whose southern base was bolstered by white working-class voters in many industrial states.