Did Lyndon Johnson Underperform in 1964?
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  Did Lyndon Johnson Underperform in 1964?
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Author Topic: Did Lyndon Johnson Underperform in 1964?  (Read 4942 times)
MIKESOWELL
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« on: December 28, 2015, 01:07:26 AM »

  Ok so here is my first ever thread. As we all know, LBJ won one of the greatest landslides in presidential history, winning a modern era record 61.1% of the popular vote and carrying 44 of the 50 states. His electoral margin was overwhelming, 486 to 52, losing only the deep south to Barry Goldwater with the exception being Goldwater's home state which I think he only lost by about 5,000 votes. HOWEVER, I sometimes feel that Johnson should have won by a bigger margin. His 61-39 percent margin was massive,  but lower than his polling throughout the campaign. I have my own theories but why do you guys think he at least slightly underperformed?
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Sir Mohamed
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« Reply #1 on: December 28, 2015, 05:32:19 AM »

Good question. He could have done better in terms of the electoral votes; as you pointed out, AZ was very close. 486-52 is actually weak compared to other landslides; Nixon in 1972 and FDR in 1936 both breaked 60%, but won 520-13 and 523-8. Reagan outperformed it twice, although he was more than ten points short in 1980 (489 EVs and 50.7% vs. LbJ's 486 EVs and 61.1%). Even John Anderson took more votes from him than from Carter.

GA and SC were winable for LBJ and maybe LA. But he was not on the ballot in the latter, for whatever reason (just "unpledged Democratic voters").

As far as the PV is concerned, he could have done better with RFK as his running mate. But both didn't like each other and LBJ wanted to prove that he is able to win an election without a Kennedy on the ticket. However, I think that HHH was a smart choice for the ticket balance.

I always wondered why he didn't break 60% in California (he got 59.1%).


Maybe this would have been possible with RFK:



President Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX)/Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (D-MA): 511 EV. (62.7%)
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)/Congressman William Miller (R-NY): 27 EV. (36.7%)
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DS0816
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« Reply #2 on: December 28, 2015, 08:09:33 AM »

Of the 26 states which carried for losing Republican, and then incumbent vice president Richard Nixon, in 1960, 25 of them flipped Democratic for a full term in electing Lyndon Johnson the nation's 36th president.

Any of the states in Nixon's 1960 Republican column could not expect to give Johnson higher margins than his national 22.58 percentage points, over Barry Goldwater, but the one that is most telling is Vermont. That 1960 election marked the first time the Republican Party did not carry Vermont. Much was made of how incredibly Barry Goldwater flipped and carried Mississippi (even more so than its historical companion state, Alabama; the two have voted the same since they first participated in 1820 with the sole exception of 1840). But, take a look at Vermont in 1964!
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Hydera
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« Reply #3 on: December 28, 2015, 11:32:02 AM »
« Edited: December 28, 2015, 11:36:24 AM by ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) »


Bradley effect/Shy Tory effect??

A sizeable amount of people tend to report to pollsters the more popular answer when polled which might of made LBJ looked better in the polls than in reality despite polling upwards of 70% at one point.


Good question. He could have done better in terms of the electoral votes; as you pointed out, AZ was very close. 486-52 is actually weak compared to other landslides; Nixon in 1972 and FDR in 1936 both breaked 60%, but won 520-13 and 523-8. Reagan outperformed it twice, although he was more than ten points short in 1980 (489 EVs and 50.7% vs. LbJ's 486 EVs and 61.1%). Even John Anderson took more votes from him than from Carter.

GA and SC were winable for LBJ and maybe LA. But he was not on the ballot in the latter, for whatever reason (just "unpledged Democratic voters").

As far as the PV is concerned, he could have done better with RFK as his running mate. But both didn't like each other and LBJ wanted to prove that he is able to win an election without a Kennedy on the ticket. However, I think that HHH was a smart choice for the ticket balance.

I always wondered why he didn't break 60% in California (he got 59.1%).


Maybe this would have been possible with RFK:



President Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX)/Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (D-MA): 511 EV. (62.7%)
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)/Congressman William Miller (R-NY): 27 EV. (36.7%)

SC was going to go to Goldwater whether of not the ticket was different, as long as LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Goldwater won that state by 59% so I doubt it was winnable for LBJ. It would also be hopeless for the rest of the Deep South states.

However if LBJ did pour more resources into Arizona, he would of been able to beat Goldwater's home state advantage.
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GPORTER
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« Reply #4 on: December 28, 2015, 11:46:33 PM »
« Edited: December 28, 2015, 11:50:13 PM by GPORTER »

It took me a while to realize that American politics is pretty much all the same. I can only speak to myself but I think I risk knowing results of elections better than I know the words written down in the Bible. I think that Lyndon Johnson underperformed in 1964. It is not surprising that he did given the results of elections 1952 and 1956 and 1960. Lyndon Johnson was always one of the most nationally unelectable Democrats in his day. I would have been fascinated to know if Lyndon Johnson would have pulled out another election win in 1968. Considering the thirty sixth President was going on his conviction and best judgment when he announced he would not seek a second full term in March 1968 what would have been equally interesting as a President Johnson the Democrat nominee for President in 1968 is a case where both Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy were alive on election day in November 1968.
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RogueBeaver
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« Reply #5 on: December 30, 2015, 10:08:39 AM »

Those Deep South states were gone once he signed the Civil Rights Act. AZ could've been flipped had LBJ invested more, like MN for Reagan 20 years later. GOP had a high 30s foundation, as proven by Landon in '36. RFK a) would never be on a ticket with LBJ b) would hurt LBJ more in the South and perhaps Mountain West.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #6 on: December 30, 2015, 12:12:35 PM »

Georgia and Arizona should've been won.

I mean Georgia never voted GOP even once, they were straightly Democratic even right after the Civil War.


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Sumner 1868
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« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2016, 04:56:53 PM »


Bradley effect/Shy Tory effect??

A sizeable amount of people tend to report to pollsters the more popular answer when polled which might of made LBJ looked better in the polls than in reality despite polling upwards of 70% at one point.

Goldwater actually polled far better in the Plains and the West then he actually preformed in the general election. Time magazine even predicted that Goldwater would win Wyoming, which he actually lost by about twelve points.

Georgia and Arizona should've been won.

I mean Georgia never voted GOP even once, they were straightly Democratic even right after the Civil War.

And the issue that made GA always vote Democratic made them flip sides in 1964.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2016, 05:50:49 PM »


Bradley effect/Shy Tory effect??

A sizeable amount of people tend to report to pollsters the more popular answer when polled which might of made LBJ looked better in the polls than in reality despite polling upwards of 70% at one point.

Goldwater actually polled far better in the Plains and the West then he actually preformed in the general election. Time magazine even predicted that Goldwater would win Wyoming, which he actually lost by about twelve points.

Georgia and Arizona should've been won.

I mean Georgia never voted GOP even once, they were straightly Democratic even right after the Civil War.

And the issue that made GA always vote Democratic made them flip sides in 1964.

Only by 9 points, a little more work in Atlanta and the "Black Belt" could easily have at least garnered a plurality.
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Boston Bread
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« Reply #9 on: January 02, 2016, 09:15:10 PM »

We have to take into account that blacks weren't allowed to vote in the deep south, so winning there would have been much harder. LBJ did better with the white southern vote than any democrat afterwards, even Carter (just not in the deep south).
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President Johnson
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« Reply #10 on: January 03, 2016, 05:45:42 AM »

We have to take into account that blacks weren't allowed to vote in the deep south, so winning there would have been much harder. LBJ did better with the white southern vote than any democrat afterwards, even Carter (just not in the deep south).

LBJ would have done better, had more blacks been able to vote. The African American vote for him was around 95% due to his efforts for civil rights legislation. That was a significant increase since Nixon got around 40% of their votes in 1960.
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Virginiá
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« Reply #11 on: January 03, 2016, 05:05:10 PM »

LBJ would have done better, had more blacks been able to vote. The African American vote for him was around 95% due to his efforts for civil rights legislation. That was a significant increase since Nixon got around 40% of their votes in 1960.

For the prospects of a near-total sweep, it is a shame. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 unleashed the African American electorate in the South where it would have helped him a lot (given the large AA populations in the Goldwater states, minus Arizona), but the VRA only came about just one year later.
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Virginiá
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« Reply #12 on: January 03, 2016, 06:49:02 PM »
« Edited: January 03, 2016, 06:53:28 PM by Virginia »

There was substantial black voting in many parts of the South by 1964.  There was slow but meaningful progress registering and turning people out between 1954 and 1964, particularly in cities.

I looked it up - It's definitely higher than I thought (in some places), but still pretty low:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/28/ten-charts-show-how-the-u-s-has-changed-for-the-better-since-mlks-march/



Not sure why it says 1965 (maybe voter registration numbers? Still indicative of voter share, though). Sort of curious why only Mississippi had single-digit numbers while even Alabama had 3x as many. At any rate, Goldwater got 87% of the vote in Mississippi, so even with a large black turnout voting almost unanimously Democratic likely would still not have given the state to Johnson. Maximum realistic black turnout in states like Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and maybe Alabama could have handed LBJ those states, though.
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Virginiá
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« Reply #13 on: January 03, 2016, 07:15:53 PM »

From there, they got about halfway to 2004 levels in all but LA, MS and AL.  And that's while still being unable to register anyone in some counties

Yeah, agreed. Relative to different points in time and different areas the turnout did made great improvements in some areas. For some reason, when I think of Jim Crow / voter suppression against blacks, I always come back around to AL, MS, LA, SC and such.

Thanks for pointing that out!
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SingingAnalyst
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« Reply #14 on: January 30, 2016, 04:30:54 PM »

At least two reasons: (1) forecasters underestimated the swing to Goldwater in the deep south; (2) Goldwater '64, like Truman '48, Reagan '80, and Perot '92, polled low. People didn't want to tell pollsters they supported these men, though secretly they did.
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mianfei
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« Reply #15 on: February 28, 2023, 07:17:00 AM »

  Ok so here is my first ever thread. As we all know, LBJ won one of the greatest landslides in presidential history, winning a modern era record 61.1% of the popular vote and carrying 44 of the 50 states. His electoral margin was overwhelming, 486 to 52, losing only the deep south to Barry Goldwater with the exception being Goldwater's home state which I think he only lost by about 5,000 votes. HOWEVER, I sometimes feel that Johnson should have won by a bigger margin. His 61-39 percent margin was massive, but lower than his polling throughout the campaign. I have my own theories but why do you guys think he at least slightly underperformed?
Actually, Johnson’s electoral margin is not that underwhelming relative to some previous landslides, especially Warren Harding’s in 1920, when he won 60.4 percent to 34.1 percent in the popular vote, but won only 404–127 in the electoral vote.

The 1920 and 1964 landslides are — although with parties reversed — remarkably similar to each other in many respects, although Cox did much worse than Goldwater in the Midwest and West and much better than the Arizona Senator in the border states.

I have certainly heard he did not do as well as polls suggested in many areas, especially those states which Goldwater carried. Perhaps the public were — like with Trump — hesistant to express their views widely?
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Alben Barkley
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« Reply #16 on: February 28, 2023, 02:32:35 PM »

No. He set a record for the popular vote since the popular vote became near-universally adopted. He only lost Deep South apartheid states which prevented his base from voting and (barely) Goldwater's home state where he didn't bother to campaign.

Maybe there's an argument that he could have won AZ/GA/SC/LA (in that order of likelihood) without voter suppression and/or with an even more brutal and vigorous campaign, but I think the record he set, which is unlikely to be surpassed any time soon, was more than enough of a thrashing. Goldwater was always going to get somewhere between 35-40% of the vote simply by virtue of being the Republican nominee and the conservative standard-bearer. Johnson vs. Rockefeller could have been a much more interesting election; Johnson still would have won, but the map would have likely looked quite different (especially in New York!)
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TheElectoralBoobyPrize
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« Reply #17 on: February 28, 2023, 05:23:32 PM »

I always wondered why he didn't break 60% in California (he got 59.1%).

When you consider that this was the only time California voted Republican between 1948 and 1992 and that Goldwater was from a border state, I'm actually impressed Johnson did that well. That's more than Nixon '72 and Reagan'84 got in the state.

No Democrat until Obama would win the state by as much as LBJ did.
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Progressive Pessimist
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« Reply #18 on: February 28, 2023, 06:16:27 PM »

Arizona might have been the only state where he actually could have won it in spite of being Goldwater's home state. Otherwise there is a reason no Democrat has ever come close.
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Liminal Trans Girl
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« Reply #19 on: February 28, 2023, 06:32:31 PM »

He under performed expectations certainly, University of California political scientist Peter H. Odegard believed Goldwater would win only Alabama and Mississippi and had doubts even with those two. 

I wonder if such expectations changed any states outcomes?
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Fuzzy Stands With His Friend, Chairman Sanchez
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« Reply #20 on: February 28, 2023, 10:59:06 PM »

Johnson overperformed in the peripheral South and in the Great Plains states.
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Sir Mohamed
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« Reply #21 on: March 01, 2023, 02:26:57 AM »

I always wondered why he didn't break 60% in California (he got 59.1%).

When you consider that this was the only time California voted Republican between 1948 and 1992 and that Goldwater was from a border state, I'm actually impressed Johnson did that well. That's more than Nixon '72 and Reagan'84 got in the state.

No Democrat until Obama would win the state by as much as LBJ did.

Yup, agreed, can't believe my original post here is from 2015. CA even elected a R-senator that year, voting out Pierre Sallinger, who was appointed by Gov. Brown a few months before.

FDR won 66% of the vote in 1936 though, actually a record I thought Biden could break in 2020.
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