1964 United States presidential election in Massachusetts

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.

1964 United States presidential election in Massachusetts

← 1960 November 3, 1964 1968 →
Turnout68.4%[1] Decrease 8.5 pp
 
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 76.19% 23.44%


President before election

Lyndon Johnson
Democratic

Elected President

Lyndon Johnson
Democratic

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 Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, while Goldwater’s running mate was Congressman William E. Miller of New York.

Johnson carried Massachusetts in a landslide, taking 76.19% of the vote to Goldwater’s 23.44%, a Democratic victory margin of 52.75%. 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. [2]

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.[2]

The staunch conservative Barry Goldwater was widely seen in the liberal Northeastern United States as a right-wing extremist;[3] 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.[4] 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. 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 Goldwater.[3] Consequently, the incumbent Johnson was able to take more than three-quarters of the vote in liberal Massachusetts, and indeed Goldwater wrote off this state and neighboring Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York, as well as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan from the beginning of his presidential campaign before Kennedy’s assassination.[5]

Results

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1964 United States presidential election in Massachusetts[6]
Party Candidate Votes Percentage Electoral votes
Democratic Lyndon B. Johnson (incumbent) 1,786,422 76.19% 14
Republican Barry Goldwater 549,727 23.44% 0
Socialist Labor Eric Hass 4,755 0.20% 0
Prohibition E. Harold Munn 3,735 0.16% 0
Write-ins Write-ins 159 0.01% 0
Totals 2,344,798 100.00% 14
Voter Turnout (Voting age/Registered) 70%/87%

Results by county

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County Lyndon B. Johnson
Democratic
Barry Goldwater
Republican
Various candidates
Other parties
Margin Total votes cast
# % # % # % # %
Barnstable 20,101 56.85% 15,133 42.80% 121 0.34% 4,968 14.05% 35,355
Berkshire 48,839 75.92% 15,160 23.57% 332 0.52% 33,679 52.35% 64,331
Bristol 146,885 78.70% 39,230 21.02% 521 0.28% 107,655 57.68% 186,636
Dukes 2,187 68.05% 1,015 31.58% 12 0.37% 1,172 36.47% 3,214
Essex 210,135 74.27% 71,653 25.32% 1,157 0.41% 138,482 48.95% 282,945
Franklin 17,106 66.76% 8,344 32.56% 174 0.68% 8,762 34.20% 25,624
Hampden 133,085 74.67% 44,299 24.86% 835 0.47% 88,786 49.81% 178,219
Hampshire 32,058 73.45% 11,385 26.09% 202 0.46% 20,673 47.36% 43,645
Middlesex 439,790 76.25% 134,729 23.36% 2,291 0.40% 305,061 52.89% 576,810
Nantucket 1,197 66.98% 587 32.85% 3 0.17% 610 34.13% 1,787
Norfolk 186,488 72.84% 68,612 26.80% 912 0.36% 117,876 46.04% 256,012
Plymouth 82,007 68.15% 37,941 31.53% 387 0.32% 44,066 36.62% 120,335
Suffolk 257,161 86.22% 40,251 13.50% 842 0.28% 216,910 72.72% 298,254
Worcester 209,383 77.08% 61,388 22.60% 860 0.32% 147,995 54.48% 271,631
Totals 1,786,422 76.19% 549,727 23.44% 8,649 0.37% 1,236,695 52.74% 2,344,798

Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic

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Analysis

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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).[7] Johnson was the first Democrat to ever win Barnstable County, Dukes County, Franklin County or Plymouth County, and the first to carry Nantucket County since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.[8] In Suffolk County, home to the state’s capital and largest city, Boston, Johnson took 86.2% of the vote. It would not be until 2020 that Suffolk County, or any Massachusetts county, would vote for a certain presidential candidate with greater than 80% of the popular vote again (in that case, Joe Biden).

This also remains the only election in which a Democratic presidential nominee has broken 70% of the vote in Massachusetts.[2] 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.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, part 2, p. 1072.
  2. ^ a b c Counting the Votes; Massachusetts
  3. ^ a b Donaldson, Gary; Liberalism’s Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964; p. 190 ISBN 1510702369
  4. ^ Edwards, Lee and Schlafly, Phyllis; Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution; pp. 286-290 ISBN 162157458X
  5. ^ Kelley, Stanley junior; ‘The Goldwater Strategy’; The Princeton Review; pp. 8-11
  6. ^ "1964 Presidential General Election Results - Massachusetts". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved February 7, 2013.
  7. ^ Sullivan, Robert David; ‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016
  8. ^ Melendez, Albert J.; The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004, pp. 91-92 ISBN 0786422173