who ran as a third-party candidate in the 1968 presidential election
United States presidential election, 1968 Richard Nixon ran on a campaign that promised to restore law and order to the nation's cities and provide new leadership in the Vietnam War. A year later, he would popularize the term "silent majority" to describe those he viewed as being his target voters. Nixon won the popular vote by a narrow margin of 0.7 percentage points, but won easily in the Electoral College, 301â€“191. The election also featured a strong third party effort by former Alabama Governor George Wallace, a vocal advocate for racial segregation in public schools. He carried five states in the Deep South and ran well in some ethnic enclave industrial districts in the North.