Nixon thought he had a slight advantage in this election because he was a lot more known then the opposition Kennedy, due to the fact that he already had 8 years of Vice Presidency under his belt. Nixon's hunch that he would we would be proven wrong during the early stage of the election when it looked like Kennedy had him beat. Nixon also considered conceding the election but his wife refused it. At 4:00 A.M. on the election night Nixon had fallen asleep and when he woke up at 6:00 A.M. he learned that he had won twenty-six states and Kennedy twenty-three. Nixon had won 49.6 percent of the popular vote. But he had lost the election because the states Kennedy won accounted for more electoral votes. Kennedy had 303 electoral votes, while Nixon had 219. It was the closest popular vote in American history until the recent elections of 2001. In 1964 Nixon again ran against Lyndon B. Johnson but had lost that election to. On November 5th, 1968, Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States. Although the pre-election polls had predicted a wider margin of victory, the election was close. Nixon won 43.4 percent of the vote compared to Humphrey who won 42.7 percent. Richard Nixon had won by barely half a million votes more then Humphrey.
As president, Richard Nixon moved to isolate himself from the administrative operations of the White House. He was known by some as "A loner by nature" , he spent most of his time alone in the Oval Office. As his first term progressed, he saw fewer people and came to rely almost exclusively on three people: H. R. Haldeman, his former campaign manager; John Ehrlichman, Haldeman's best friend, who handled domestic policy; and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser. As it was said Nixon was a very secluded president at times, a total opposite of Lyndon Johnson. Johnson stated once that he remembered paying a visit to Nixon in the oval office and he couldn't believe what he had seen.