Humphrey's margin of victory was significantly down from President Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide 33.6% in 1964. American involvement in the Vietnam War, plus race riots in Detroit and the rest of the country, brought about unpopularity for the incumbent president and disenchantment towards his political agenda. Vice President Humphrey ran on a platform to continue the policies of Johnson's Great Society and support civil rights for African Americans, former Vice President Nixon ran on a law and order platform to combat crime in the nation's cities plus promote new leadership in Vietnam, and Governor Wallace ran a similar law and order campaign with an emphasis on opposition to school desegregation and support for states' rights.
Although Wallace did not poll as heavily in the Midwest as he did in the Deep South, he was able to appeal to blue collar working class voters who traditionally voted Democrat, but had become disillusioned with the race riots and civil rights. As a result, he siphoned off enough votes to allow Nixon to win every state in the region except for Humphrey's home state of Minnesota and Michigan. Even with Michigan being Wallace's second best state percentage-wise behind Ohio, Humphrey was able to hold on to the Wolverine State's electoral votes for the Democrats once more, mainly by running up margins in heavily populated Wayne County (Detroit), the surrounding suburban counties of Macomb and Monroe, Genesee County (Flint), and the Upper Peninsula. Michigan would not vote Democratic again until 1992.
^Although he was born in California and he served as a U.S. Senator from California, in 1968 Richard Nixon’s official state of residence was New York, because he moved there to practice law after his defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election. During his first term as president, Nixon re-established his residency in California. Consequently, most reliable reference books list Nixon's home state as New York in the 1968 election and his home state as California in the 1972 (and 1960) election.