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1968 United States presidential election in South Carolina

The 1968 United States presidential election in South Carolina took place on November 5, 1968. All 50 states and the District of Columbia were part of the 1968 United States presidential election. South Carolina voters chose 8 electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

For six decades up to 1950 South Carolina was a one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party. The Republican Party had been moribund due to the disfranchisement of blacks and the complete absence of other support bases as South Carolina completely lacked upland or German refugee whites opposed to secession. Between 1900 and 1948, no Republican presidential candidate ever obtained more than seven percent of the total presidential vote – a vote which in 1924 reached as low as 6.6 percent of the total voting-age population (or approximately 15 percent of the voting-age white population).

48% of white voters supported Nixon, 41% supported Wallace, and 12% supported Humphrey. South Carolina was the only Deep South state not to support Wallace in this election.

Campaign

Although Nixon ignored the other Deep South states because he knew that he had no chance of competing with George Wallace, in South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, believing Wallace could not win the election and that northeastern urban liberalism would continue to dominate if he endorsed Wallace, took the stump for Nixon in South Carolina. The result was that Wallace's support in South Carolina plummeted rapidly, although in early September the Alabama governor predicted he would carry the state, an opinion backed up by early polling in mid-September. Other polls, however, had the race very close between the three candidates.

Nixon himself campaigned in the state, aided by Thurmond, at the end of September.