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The key states proved to be New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Texas and California. By dawn, it became clear that Humphrey could not win a clear victory, but could deadlock the election if he could win two or three of those states; California was absolutely crucial. New Jersey only went to Nixon with a big assist from Wallace, who drew 250,000 votes in the Garden State. Ohio, originally regarded as safely in Nixon's vault, teetered all night, finally fell into the Republican column. So did California, which fell to Nixon by a margin of perhaps 1%, at least in part thanks to a Wallace vote of roughly 7% that cut into normally Democratic precincts. On form, Nixon should have carried his native state by a far wider margin. Texas went narrowly to Humphrey. The state that finally sealed Nixon's victory was, ironically, Illinois. In 1960, Mayor Richard Daley's magical machine in Cook County helped nail down John F. Kennedy's presidential victory by delivering enough votes to give him a 9,000-vote statewide margin. This time, despite another late flood of Democratic votes from Daleyland, Nixon clung to a slender advantage.
Victory assured, Nixon finally appeared at midday before hardy workers who had stayed through the night at the Waldorf and informed them that he had just been on the phone with Humphrey. One of the things he told the Vice President, he said, was that "I know how it is to lose a close one." With a pledge to Americans that he would seek to "bring us together," he departed for Key Biscayne, Fla., and three days of recuperation from the campaign's rigors.
Portents for the Pessimists
In the final week, the enameled confidence that had marked Nixon's staff from the first began to crack. In the final hours, it all but collapsed. From a virtually unassailable lead of 16 points over Hubert Humphrey in the mid-August Gallup poll, Nixon had declined to a scant two-point edge in both the Gallup and Harris surveys on the last week-end of the race. On Election Eve, Harris weighed in with a final poll that took into account the impact of the Viet Nam bombing pause proclaimed by Lyndon Johnson last week. In it—astonishingly—Humphrey led by three points.
Were the Democrats about to pull off an upset that would dwarf even Harry Truman's defeat of Thomas Dewey exactly 20 years earlier? For the pessimists in Nixon's camp, there were portents aplenty. The usually reliable New York Daily News straw poll gave Humphrey a 3.3-point lead in New York. California, once thought to be so secure for the G.O.P. that Nixon's strategists wondered why Humphrey was wasting so much time there, suddenly turned into a neck-and-neck race, with the Los Angeles Times State Poll giving Nixon a bare one-point lead on Election Eve. Michigan and Pennsylvania seemed to be tipping toward Humphrey. Texas' disputatious Democrats closed ranks, assuring a strong showing for the Vice President. Then, too, there was the complicating factor of Alabama's George Wallace, who all along seemed to pose a serious threat to Nixon in Southern and Border States that might otherwise have been considered safe for the G.O.P.
Shucking the Old Image