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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, November 6, 1968
GOP sweeps most state races
Gov. Docking Bob Dole win
(Continued from page 1)
Topeka: Election '68
Early in the election night, Nixon took a lead over Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey and independent George C. Wallace, but a computer malfunction in Wyandotte County left the exact margin in doubt. Earlier the Vice President had held a 50,000 vote margin.
Docking and Harman fought tooth and nail all evening for voter approval, with the 40-year-old Republican leading by only a 3 vote margin at one point. At another point during the night Harman jumped 852 votes ahead of the governor.
Polls had predicted a vicious struggle between Docking and Harman, and the voters did not let the forecasters down as the 43-year-old governor attempted to equal his late father's record as the only Democratic governor to win two terms in Kansas history.
At mid-evening, Harman was holding a lead in his home county of Johnson and a slim margin in populous Sedgwick County, but Docking was leading in Wyandotte and Shawnee counties. A number of rural Kansas counties had not reported by mid-evening.
The tightness of the race for governor eased in late returns as Docking pulled ahead of Harman by about 20,000 votes with 55 per cent of the precincts reported.
An estimated 950,000 voters turned out for the general election.
In other state races Republican Kent Frizzell of Wichita was running well ahead of Democrat Jerry Muth for attorney general.
The Wichita Democrat was steadily falling behind Frizzell, who is a state senator.
Republicans also were running ahead in races for secretary of state, state auditor, treasurer, insurance commissioner and printer. A close race was shaping up in the contest for lieutenant governor.
State Rep. John J. Conard, the Republican speaker of the Kansas house, was holding a thin margin over Democrat James H. DearCourse, a former Docking aide, in the race for the state's second highest post.
TV watchers left in 'splendid misery'
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Many television watchers who had to go to work today went to bed last night not knowing who had been elected president—or if, in fact, there was a winner.
The Richard Nixon-Hubert Humphrey showdown had turned out to be a real horse race, with George Wallace siphoning off some key electoral votes—and, for one of the few times in recent years, video's electronic equipment was not able to make a quick prediction.
It was, in short, a rather pleasant throwback to the good old days, enabling the viewer to settle down in front of the television set with a platter full of food, some drinks and friends, and enjoy the happy agony of rooting home the candidate of one's choice.
Pollsters right
The inability of the networks to offer a quick prediction about the outcome of the presidential race made one point clear immediately: the pollsters who said, in their late tallies, that the election was "too close to call" were right on target.
Shortly after midnight CST, NBC-TV's David Brinkley said, "I don't think we're going to get a winner tonight." The popular vote showed a fantastically close race between Humphrey and Nixon. Republican Nixon had a slight leg up in the network electoral vote projections.
But still in the balance were big, pivotal states where Humphrey and Nixon were too close to allow a television prediction—or where the returns were too few to be conclusive.
Despite this state of affairs in which televiewers were kept dangling in splendid misery, the networks provided projections on numerous races, and, above all offered truly first-rate analyses of how and why many voters cast their ballots.
Tonight, by the way, CBS-TV will present an hour post-election special entitled "What Happened Last Night."
To be continued
Everyone, you can be sure, will be happy to find out, because, as much of the nation went to sleep last night and early today, a bewildering and apparently endless number of possibilities confronted viewers and voters. To wit:
Would neither Humphrey or Nixon get enough electoral votes to win, throwing the election into the House of Representatives and
TWO VICTORIOUS KANSAS CANDIDATES
Successful gubernatorial candidate Robert Docking (left) and Robert Dole, the new senator-elect from Kansas, greeted newsmen and well-wishers yesterday at the Jayhawk hotel in Topeka. The candidates appeared at the hotel after the election returns showed strong leads by both men.
precipitating a constitutional crisis?
Would absentee votes provide the difference? Would everyone have to wait for the California outcome to decide the winner? Would a broken-down computer in Dallas make it necessary to wait for a late decision in the close Texas race? And so forth.
For televiewers, it was a spectacular showdown to a presidential race that once appeared to be a runaway. And the odds are that there was a lot of dreaming about politics by viewers who went to bed not knowing the identity of the next president of the United States—or if there was one.
Spot-check indicates heavy Kansas voting
Reports from one end of the state to the other and from cities of various sizes were about the same. Observers used such terms as "amazing," "very heavy," "a steady stream" and "much bigger than usual."
By United Press International
A mid-day spot-check across Kansas indicated a tremendous turnout of voters for yesterday's balloting.
In Kansas City, Kan., a check of about 90 per cent of all precincts showed an extremely heavy vote in all but one precinct.
Workers at that polling place called the turnout about average. One observer of the overall voting pace termed it "amazing."
Wichita authorities reported voting "very heavy in all parts of the city."
At Topeka, the turnout was described as "very heavy."
Dodge City, where a hot congressional race between Republican State Sen. Keith Sebelius and State Rep. George Meeker in the big First District was a feature contest, reported voting at an extremely fast pace. "They poured in all the doors, all morning, in steady streams," a worker said.
Hutchinson reported a very heavy turnout.
Concordia also had a heavy turnout that "kept up steadily all morning."