1968 Republican Party presidential primaries

Candidates

The following political leaders were candidates for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination:

Nominee

Other major candidates

These candidates participated in multiple state primaries or were included in multiple major national polls.

Favorite sons

The following candidates ran only in their home state's primary, caucus, or convention. They ran for the purpose of controlling their state's respective delegate slate at the national convention and did not appear to be considered national candidates by the media. The media referred to them as "favorite son" candidates.

Declined to run

The following persons were listed in two or more major national polls or were the subject of media speculation surrounding their potential candidacy, but declined to actively seek the nomination.

Polling

National polling

Before November 1966

After November 1966

Head-to-head polling

Nixon v. Romney

Statewide polling

New Hampshire

Primary race

Nixon was the front-runner for the Republican nomination and to a great extent the story of the Republican primary campaign and nomination is the story of one Nixon opponent after another entering the race and then dropping out.

Nixon's first challenger was Michigan Governor George W. Romney. Romney's grandfather, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had emigrated to Mexico in 1886 with his three wives and their children, after the U.S. federal government outlawed polygamy. However Romney's parents (monogamous under new church doctrine) retained their U.S. citizenship and returned to the United States with him and his siblings in 1912. Questions were occasionally asked about Romney's eligibility to hold the office of President due to his birth in Mexico, given an asserted ambiguity in the United States Constitution over the phrase "natural-born citizen". By February 1967, some newspapers were questioning Romney's eligibility given his Mexican birth.

A Gallup poll in mid-1967 showed Nixon with 39%, followed by Romney with 25%. However, in a slip of the tongue, Romney told a news reporter that he had been "brainwashed" by the military and the diplomatic corps into supporting the Vietnam War; the remark led to weeks of ridicule in the national news media. As the year 1968 opened, Romney was opposed to further American intervention in Vietnam and had decided to run as the Republican version of Eugene McCarthy (The New York Times 2/18/1968). Romney's support slowly faded and he withdrew from the race on February 28, 1968. (The New York Times 2/29/1968).

Nixon won a resounding victory in the important New Hampshire primary on March 12, winning 78% of the vote. Anti-war Republicans wrote in the name of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the leader of the GOP's liberal wing, who received 11% of the vote and became Nixon's new challenger. Nixon led Rockefeller in the polls throughout the primary campaign. Rockefeller defeated Nixon in the Massachusetts primary on April 30 but otherwise fared poorly in the state primaries and conventions.

By early spring, California Governor Ronald Reagan, the leader of the GOP's conservative wing, had become Nixon's chief rival. In the Nebraska primary on May 14, Nixon won with 70% of the vote to 21% for Reagan and 5% for Rockefeller. While this was a wide margin for Nixon, Reagan remained Nixon's leading challenger. Nixon won the next primary of importance, Oregon, on May 15 with 65% of the vote and won all the following primaries except for California (June 4), where only Reagan appeared on the ballot. Reagan's margin in California gave him a plurality of the nationwide primary vote, but when the Republican National Convention assembled, Nixon had 656 delegates according to a UPI poll (with 667 needed for the nomination).

Total popular vote

• Ronald Reagan – 1,696,632 (37.93%)
• Richard Nixon – 1,679,443 (37.54%)
• James A. Rhodes – 614,492 (13.74%)
• Nelson A. Rockefeller – 164,340 (3.67%)
• Unpledged – 140,639 (3.14%)
• Eugene McCarthy (write-in) – 44,520 (1.00%)
• Harold Stassen – 31,655 (0.71%)
• John Volpe – 31,465 (0.70%)
• Others – 21,456 (0.51%)
• George Wallace (write-in) – 15,291 (0.34%)
• Robert F. Kennedy (write-in) – 14,524 (0.33%)
• Hubert Humphrey (write-in) – 5,698 (0.13)
• Lyndon Johnson (write-in) – 4,824 (0.11%)
• George Romney – 4,447 (0.10%)
• Raymond P. Shafer – 1,223 (0.03%)
• William W. Scranton – 724 (0.02%)
• Charles H. Percy – 689 (0.02%)
• Barry M. Goldwater – 598 (0.01%)
• John V. Lindsay – 591 (0.01%)

Endorsements

The convention

At the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, Reagan and Rockefeller planned to unite their forces in a stop-Nixon movement, but the strategy fell apart when neither man agreed to support the other for the nomination. Rockefeller in particular was seen as unacceptable to Southern Conservatives. Nixon won the nomination on the first ballot. He was able to secure the nomination because of the support of many Southern delegates, after he and his subordinates made concessions to Strom Thurmond and Harry Dent. Nixon then chose Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew to be his Vice-Presidential candidate, despite complaints from within the GOP that Agnew was an unknown quantity, and that a better-known and more popular candidate, such as Romney, should have been the Vice-Presidential nominee. However, Agnew was seen as a candidate who could appeal to Rockefeller Republicans, was acceptable to Southern Conservatives, and had a solid law-and-order record. It was also reported that Nixon's first choice for running mate was his longtime friend and ally, Robert Finch, who was the lieutenant governor of California since 1967 and later his HEW Secretary, but Finch declined the offer.