1964

[NewFederalist]

Yes but only if JFK had not been assassinated. He was ahead in the polls at the time of Kennedy's demise (and I think Nelson Rockefeller was as well).

[Storebought]

Yes but only if JFK had not been assassinated. He was ahead in the polls at the time of Kennedy's demise (and I think Nelson Rockefeller was as well).

I knew you would always come back ..

[A18]

Yes but only if JFK had not been assassinated. He was ahead in the polls at the time of Kennedy's demise (and I think Nelson Rockefeller was as well).

Wait, Goldwater was ahead of Kennedy in the polls? What's your source?

I think Kennedy probably would have managed to win anyway, after the campaign got going. Goldwater's past comments would come back to haunt him, and Kennedy did have an approval rating in the mid-60s (at least, according to Gallup).

[True Democrat]

Goldwater had a "sunbelt strategy" which could have, if executed properly, have won the election.  Nixon smoothed out the strategy in '72 to win 49 out of 50.  George Will put it best after the 1980 election, "It took 16 years to count the ballots [from the 1964 election], and Barry won."

Was his Sunbelt Strategy the same as Nixon's or was it different? Why did it fail, other events notwithstanding.

It was basically the "southern strategy."  The sunbelt strategy failed in '64 because LBJ had the Kennedy sympathies, a strong voter coalition, but also because LBJ and the media re-defined Goldwater to the national audience as a bigoted right wing war monger.  Goldwater's plan even in the weeks directly after the Republican National Convention seemed possible, but as the campaign continued, the chances of victory seemed less and less likely.  Theodore H. White's book "The Making of the President 1964" and F. Clifton White's book "Suite 3501" are both fine accounts of the 1964 Goldwater campaign. 

I'd say it worked, at least a little bit.

Gallup had Johnson with 82% at one time in the campaign, and even their last poll had him at like 65%, but Goldwater narrowed the gap significantly.