United States presidential election in Massachusetts, 1964

United States presidential election in Massachusetts, 1964

November 3, 1964

Nominee Lyndon B. Johnson Barry Goldwater Party Democratic Republican Home state Texas Arizona Running mate Hubert Humphrey William E. Miller Electoral vote 14 0 Popular vote 1,786,422 549,727 Percentage 76.2% 23.4%

County Results   Johnson – 80–90%   Johnson – 70–80%   Johnson – 60–70%   Johnson – 50–60%

President before election Lyndon Johnson Democratic Elected President Lyndon Johnson Democratic

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The 1964 United States presidential election in Massachusetts took place on November 3, 1964, as part of the 1964 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all 50 states and D.C. Voters chose 14 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice President.

Massachusetts voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic nominee, incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, over the Republican nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Johnson ran with incumbent Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, while Goldwater's running mate was Congressman William E. Miller of New York.

Johnson carried Massachusetts in a mega landslide, taking a whopping 76.19% of the vote to Goldwater's 23.44%, a Democratic victory margin of 52.74%. This made it the third most Democratic state in the nation, after Rhode Island and Hawaii.

Even in the midst of a massive nationwide Democratic landslide, Massachusetts still weighed in for this election as 30% more Democratic than the national average.

Massachusetts had been a Democratic-leaning state since 1928, but had voted Republican as recently as 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower won the state by 19 points. In 1960, Massachusetts native John F. Kennedy had carried the state with 60.22% of the vote, which up to that point had been the strongest Democratic victory in Massachusetts ever, but this record was quickly overtaken by Lyndon Johnson's landslide in 1964, which remains the strongest Democratic showing in Massachusetts ever.

The staunch conservative Barry Goldwater was widely seen in the liberal Northeastern United States as a right-wing extremist; he had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Johnson campaign portrayed him as a warmonger who as president would provoke a nuclear war. Thus Goldwater performed especially weakly in liberal northeastern states like Massachusetts, and for the first time in history, a Democratic presidential candidate swept every Northeastern state in 1964. Not only did Johnson win every Northeastern state, but he won all of them with landslides of over 60% of the vote, including Massachusetts, which weighed in as the third most Democratic state in the nation.

While Kennedy had won 60% in Massachusetts in 1960 mostly by sweeping the ethnic Catholic vote, in 1964, this traditional Democratic coalition was joined by mass defections of moderate Yankee Republicans who had voted for Eisenhower and Nixon but could not support the extremist Goldwater. Consequently, the incumbent Johnson was able to take more than 3/4 of the vote in liberal Massachusetts.

Johnson swept every county in Massachusetts, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had ever done so. This feat would not be repeated again until 1992 (Democrats have subsequently swept every county in Massachusetts in every modern election since 1992). In Suffolk County, home to the state's capital and largest city, Boston, Johnson took an epic 86.2% of the vote; this remains the only election ever in which a presidential candidate of any party has broken 80% in Suffolk County.

This also remains the only election in which a Democratic presidential nominee has broken 70% of the vote in Massachusetts. Johnson's 76.19% remains the highest vote share any presidential candidate of either party has ever received in the state, and his 52.74% margin of victory is the widest margin by which any presidential candidate of either party has ever carried the state.

Results

References

See also

State Results of the 1964 U.S. presidential election
Candidates	Lyndon Johnson Barry Goldwater Full list
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Other 1964 elections	House Senate Gubernatorial