1964 United States presidential election in South Carolina

The 1964 United States presidential election in South Carolina took place on November 3, 1964, as part of the 1964 United States presidential election. South Carolina voters chose 8[2] representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

1964 United States presidential election in South Carolina

← 1960 November 3, 1964[1] 1968 →
 
Nominee Barry Goldwater Lyndon B. Johnson
Party Republican Democratic
Home state Arizona Texas
Running mate William E. Miller Hubert Humphrey
Electoral vote 8 0
Popular vote 309,048 215,700
Percentage 58.89% 41.10%


President before election

Lyndon B. Johnson
Democratic

Elected President

Lyndon B. Johnson
Democratic

Background

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Between 1900 and 1948, no Republican presidential candidate ever obtained more than seven percent of the total presidential vote[3] – a vote which in 1924 reached as low as 6.6 percent of the total voting-age population.[4] South Carolina was a one-party state dominated by the Democrats due to the disfranchisement of black voters.[5]

Following Harry S. Truman's To Secure These Rights in 1947, the following year South Carolina's Governor Strom Thurmond, led almost all of the state Democratic machinery into the States' Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats). As the Dixiecrat presidential candidate, Thurmond won 71 percent of the state's limited electorate and every county except poor white industrial Anderson and Spartanburg.[6] During the 1950s, the state's wealthier and more urbanized whites became extremely disenchanted with the national Democratic Party and to a lesser extent with the federal administration of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.[7]

Campaign

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Roger Milliken invited Barry Goldwater to speak in South Carolina in 1959, and it was televised in the entire state. Milliken later financially supported Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign.[8] During the 1950s, wealthy textile mill owners in the upcountry developed a grassroots state Republican Party dedicated to the tenets of the John Birch Society. This group nominated the most conservative delegation at the party's 1960 convention.[9] These wealthy businessmen would merge with hardline segregationists to draft Barry Goldwater for the Republican nomination in 1960 and join forces therein by the time of the next presidential election.[9]

U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party in September, to join the Republicans. Goldwater gave a televised speech in Columbia, South Carolina, that featured segregationist politicians on-stage with him, including Thurmond, Iris Faircloth Blitch, James F. Byrnes, James H. Gray Sr., Albert Watson, and John Bell Williams, in which he criticized the Civil Rights Act.[10]

The Democratic Party, for its part, had struggled bitterly over whether to select electors pledged to incumbent President Lyndon Johnson due to his support for civil rights and desegregation; however, like Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, South Carolina chose Democratic electors pledged to LBJ.[11] President Johnson did not campaign in the state, being hopeful that a black registration increased by more than Kennedy's 1960 margin[12] and support from economically liberal Senator Olin Johnston would help him win without campaigning.[13]

Early polls in South Carolina gave a substantial lead to Goldwater, but by the end of October, the state was viewed as similarly close to the 1952 and 1960 races where the Democrats won by under ten thousand votes.[14][15]

Goldwater received 70% of the white vote.[16]

Results

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1964 United States presidential election in South Carolina
Party Candidate Votes %
Republican Barry Goldwater 309,048 58.89%
Democratic Lyndon B. Johnson (inc.) 215,700 41.10%
Write-in 8 0.00%
Total votes 524,756 100%

Results by county

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County Barry Goldwater
Republican
Lyndon B. Johnson
Democratic
Margin Total votes cast
# % # % # %
Abbeville 1,448 35.00% 2,689 65.00% −1,241 −30.00% 4,137
Aiken 17,467 69.62% 7,622 30.38% 9,845 39.24% 25,089
Allendale 1,740 69.27% 772 30.73% 968 38.54% 2,512
Anderson 8,398 41.85% 11,670 58.15% −3,272 −16.30% 20,068
Bamberg 2,366 62.51% 1,419 37.49% 947 25.02% 3,785
Barnwell 3,670 72.64% 1,382 27.36% 2,288 45.28% 5,052
Beaufort 3,432 55.54% 2,747 44.46% 685 11.08% 6,179
Berkeley 6,100 63.30% 3,537 36.70% 2,563 26.60% 9,637
Calhoun 1,591 72.22% 612 27.78% 979 44.44% 2,203
Charleston 32,509 69.06% 14,564 30.94% 17,945 38.12% 47,073
Cherokee 3,627 46.00% 4,258 54.00% −631 −8.00% 7,885
Chester 2,915 42.89% 3,882 57.11% −967 −14.22% 6,797
Chesterfield 2,449 34.58% 4,634 65.42% −2,185 −30.84% 7,083
Clarendon 2,960 78.06% 832 21.94% 2,128 56.12% 3,792
Colleton 4,637 69.33% 2,051 30.67% 2,586 38.66% 6,688
Darlington 6,717 57.28% 5,010 42.72% 1,707 14.56% 11,727
Dillon 2,742 49.72% 2,773 50.28% −31 −0.56% 5,515
Dorchester 5,109 76.11% 1,604 23.89% 3,505 52.22% 6,713
Edgefield 2,489 75.13% 824 24.87% 1,665 50.26% 3,313
Fairfield 1,997 43.18% 2,628 56.82% −631 −13.64% 4,625
Florence 10,346 59.11% 7,157 40.89% 3,189 18.22% 17,503
Georgetown 4,705 57.89% 3,423 42.11% 1,282 15.78% 8,128
Greenville 29,358 62.96% 17,275 37.04% 12,083 25.92% 46,633
Greenwood 5,653 50.78% 5,479 49.22% 174 1.56% 11,132
Hampton 2,259 61.09% 1,439 38.91% 820 22.18% 3,698
Horry 8,293 60.37% 5,444 39.63% 2,849 20.74% 13,737
Jasper 1,593 61.39% 1,002 38.61% 591 22.78% 2,595
Kershaw 5,617 63.94% 3,168 36.06% 2,449 27.88% 8,785
Lancaster 4,742 48.83% 4,970 51.17% −228 −2.34% 9,712
Laurens 5,081 53.79% 4,365 46.21% 716 7.58% 9,446
Lee 2,489 68.29% 1,156 31.71% 1,333 36.58% 3,645
Lexington 12,041 71.47% 4,807 28.53% 7,234 42.94% 16,848
Marion 3,197 60.98% 2,046 39.02% 1,151 21.96% 5,243
Marlboro 1,864 43.49% 2,422 56.51% −558 −13.02% 4,286
McCormick 939 65.34% 498 34.66% 441 30.68% 1,437
Newberry 5,571 63.35% 3,222 36.64% 2,349 26.71% 8,794[a]
Oconee 2,712 32.79% 5,560 67.21% −2,848 −34.42% 8,272
Orangeburg 10,456 65.09% 5,607 34.91% 4,849 30.18% 16,063
Pickens 5,882 62.63% 3,506 37.33% 2,376 25.30% 9,391[b]
Richland 27,306 60.35% 17,939 39.65% 9,367 20.70% 45,245
Saluda 2,524 64.17% 1,409 35.83% 1,115 28.34% 3,933
Spartanburg 18,411 47.89% 20,034 52.11% −1,623 −4.22% 38,445
Sumter 7,729 67.19% 3,775 32.81% 3,954 34.38% 11,504
Union 3,815 49.50% 3,892 50.50% −77 −1.00% 7,707
Williamsburg 4,810 68.15% 2,248 31.85% 2,562 36.30% 7,058
York 7,292 46.62% 8,346 53.36% −1,054 −6.74% 15,642[c]
Totals 309,048 58.89% 215,700 41.10% 93,348 17.79% 524,756

Analysis

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The swing away from Johnson was general except in a few areas of substantial black voter registration increases, and Goldwater's lowcountry dominance easily offset Johnson's narrow edge amongst the poor whites of the upcountry who, despite their hostility to Johnson's civil rights measures, saw Goldwater as a Dixiecrat-style conservative committed to privatization of services poor whites viewed essential.[17] After narrow losses in 1952 and 1960, Goldwater became the first Republican presidential candidate to carry South Carolina since Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876.

Notes

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  1. ^ One write-in vote was recorded from this county.
  2. ^ 3 write-in votes were recorded from this county.
  3. ^ 4 write-in votes were recorded from this county.

References

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  1. ^ "United States Presidential election of 1964 - Encyclopædia Britannica". Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  2. ^ "1964 Election for the Forty-Fifth Term (1965-69)". Retrieved May 27, 2017.
  3. ^ Mickey, Robert (2015). Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944-1972. p. 440. ISBN 0691149631.
  4. ^ Mickey; Paths Out of Dixie, p. 27.
  5. ^ Phillips, Kevin P. The Emerging Republican Majority. pp. 208, 210. ISBN 9780691163246.
  6. ^ Frederikson, Kari. The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968. p. 185. ISBN 9780807875445.
  7. ^ Graham, Cole Blease; Moore, William V. South Carolina Politics and Government. pp. 79, 81. ISBN 9780803270435.
  8. ^ "The Man Who Launched the GOP's Civil War". Politico. October 1, 2015. Archived from the original on September 19, 2023.
  9. ^ a b Mickey. Paths out of Dixie, p. 234.
  10. ^ Black & Black 1992, pp. 152–153.
  11. ^ Congressional Quarterly, Incorporated; CQ Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, vol. 25 (1967), p. 1121.
  12. ^ Johnson, Robert David. All the Way with LBJ: The 1964 Presidential Election. p. 168. ISBN 0521737524.
  13. ^ Johnson. All the Way with LBJ, p. 224.
  14. ^ "State by State Rundown Shows Johnson Way Out in Front". The Morning Call. Allentown, Pennsylvania. October 31, 1964. p. 11.
  15. ^ Johnson. All the Way with LBJ, p. 275.
  16. ^ Black & Black 1992, p. 155.
  17. ^ Phillips. The Emerging Republican Majority, pp. 263–265.

Works cited

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