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1964 United States presidential election in Massachusetts

← 1960 November 3, 1964 1968 →
Turnout	68.4% 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%
County Results Municipality Results Johnson   40–50%   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90%   90-100% Goldwater   50–60%   60–70% Tie   40–50%
President before election Lyndon Johnson Democratic Elected President Lyndon Johnson Democratic

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v t e

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 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, and remains the strongest-ever Democratic showing in Massachusetts. Even in the midst of the nationwide Democratic landslide of that year, Massachusetts still weighed in 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 was the strongest-ever Democratic showing in Massachusetts, but this record was quickly overtaken by Johnson in 1964.

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 such as Massachusetts. Not only did Johnson win every Northeastern state—the first time that a Democratic presidential candidate had done so—but he won all of them with over 60% of the vote.

While Kennedy had won 60% in Massachusetts in 1960 mostly by garnering the ethnic Catholic vote, in 1964 the traditional Democratic coalition was joined by a mass defection of moderate Yankee Republicans who had voted for Eisenhower and Nixon but could not support Goldwater. Consequently, the incumbent Johnson was able to sweep the state—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, prior to Kennedy's assassination.

Results

Results by county

Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic

• Barnstable
• Dukes
• Franklin
• Nantucket
• Plymouth

Analysis

Johnson swept every county in Massachusetts, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had done so. This feat would not be repeated until 1992 (since which time, Democrats have swept every county in Massachusetts in every modern election). Johnson was the first Democrat ever to win Barnstable County, Dukes County, Franklin County or Plymouth County, and the first to carry Nantucket County since Woodrow Wilson in 1916. In Suffolk County, home to the state's capital and largest city, Boston, Johnson took 86.2% of the vote. Not until 2020 would any Massachusetts county again hand a presidential candidate more than 80% of the popular vote (on that occasion, Suffolk County to Joe Biden).

The election of 1964 remains the only one 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.

See also

• United States presidential elections in Massachusetts

References

1. Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, part 2, p. 1072.
2. ^ Counting the Votes; Massachusetts
3. ^ Donaldson, Gary. Liberalism's Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964, p. 190 ISBN 1510702369
4. Edwards, Lee; 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

v t e State and district results of the 1964 United States presidential election
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• 1964 United States presidential election by state
• United States presidential elections in Massachusetts
• 1964 Massachusetts elections