Was the election of 1968 more modern than the election of 1988?

[buritobr]

If you ignore Wallace and observe only the geographic distribution of the vote for Humphrey, you can see that the map of 1968 is more look alike the 21th century maps than the map of 1988 looks.
Humphrey won the Northeast. He had >60% in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, he won Maine, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Humphrey's vote in the South, outside Texas and West Virginia, was very scarce.
In 1988, Bush had a national relatively uniform victory. Dukakis and Bush had a tie in the Northeast. Even in his home state, Dukakis did not have a huge margin. Bush won 4 states in New England. Dukakis had good result in many counties in Appalachia. West Virginia was more distant to the national result in 1988 than it was in 1968.

The map of 1968 looks like the maps of the cultural split of the 21th century elections. The map of 1988 still looks like a map of class split.

[buritobr]

If you ignore Wallace and observe only the geographic distribution of the vote for Humphrey, you can see that the map of 1968 is more look alike the 21th century maps than the map of 1988 looks.
Humphrey won the Northeast. He had >60% in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, he won Maine, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Humphrey's vote in the South, outside Texas and West Virginia, was very scarce.
In 1988, Bush had a national relatively uniform victory. Dukakis and Bush had a tie in the Northeast. Even in his home state, Dukakis did not have a huge margin. Bush won 4 states in New England. Dukakis had good result in many counties in Appalachia. West Virginia was more distant to the national result in 1988 than it was in 1968.

The map of 1968 looks like the maps of the cultural split of the 21th century elections. The map of 1988 still looks like a map of class split.

It was an interesting election. Nixon beat Humphrey in the popular vote by just 0.7% but won 301 electoral votes compared to Humphrey's 191. And despite the close national popular vote margin, not a single state was decided by a margin of less than 1%.

Nixon would likely have won an Obama 08 style victory if George Wallace didn't  run

What do you mean "Obama 08 style victory"? National 7 point margin?

[buritobr]

There is no doubt that 1968 was more “modern” than that of 1988, at least inasmuch as there was much more overwhelming white opposition in the South to the Democrats, apart from the critical difference (which I discuss here.) of then-unionized coal counties, which in fact were Humphrey’s largest single area of white support in the South.

Humphrey received only around 5 to 10 percent white support in the Deep South and Arkansas, only around one-sixth of the white electorate in Tennessee and North Carolina (in these two states McGovern probably garnered a larger share of white votes than Humphrey), around one-quarter in Florida, Oklahoma and Virginia, and around one-third in Texas.

Excepting coal counties and some parts of central Texas (called “brass-collar” by Kevin Phillips) Humphrey was as totally demolished in the white South as we have come used to since 2000 (more so in urban areas, less in rural). In contrast, Democrats between 1976 and 1996 often won a quarter of white votes in the Deep South and over forty percent in the Outer South. Consider the following representative figures for overwhelmingly white rural southern counties:

	1968 Humphrey vote	1988 Dukakis vote	2016 Hilary Clinton vote
Cameron Parish, LA	20.56%	55.45%	8.75%
Jackson County, AL	9.37%	54.27%	17.50%
Clay County, AR	26.16%	55.16%	23.06%
Nowata County, OK	29.14%	52.03%	17.51%
Benton County, TN	22.15%	56.42%	23.29%

Sure, we have already discussed in other threads. Jimmy Carter 1976 made a comeback of the democrats in the South that had a 20 year effect. The democrats performed poorly in the South in 1984 and 1988 because they performed poorly in the whole country (example: Reagan had a landslide against Mondale in Georgia in 1984, but the result was very close to the national result). However there was also a republican comeback in the north. In 1960, 1964, 1968 and 1972, Masschusetts was much more D than the national vote. In 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992, Masschusetts was closer to the national vote. Since 1996, Massachusetts is much more D again.