Talk Elections

The question is as in the title. I noticed that in 1964, Lyndon Johnson received 61% of the vote in Colorado, 62% in Washington, 64% in Oregon, and a surprising 66% in Alaska. Why did he do so well in those states? What was it about Goldwater that turned them off?

Democrats were still doing reasonably well in rural areas and suburbs weren’t nearly as politically influential as they would be starting in the 1980s

Still surprising Goldwater did so poorly in Colorado not cracking 40% as he did in surrounding states. Colorado leaned heavily GOP back then.

Here’s the PVI map from 1964

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Pretty surprised CO was more dem than DE and IL

I saw a Time article from that year, which stated that Colorado was turning to Johnson because of Goldwater's views on (among other things), farm and nuclear policy. But why did it do so, to a greater extent, than any of the neighboring states?

As for the suburbs, I thought that Johnson won most of them that year, except for the ones outside of Chicago and those in Southern California.

And CA as well. Johnson only got 59% in CA since wealthy businessmen in Orange County largely supported Goldwater, just keeping Johnson under 60% statewide.

My theory is that the Johnson/Humphrey ticket heavily appealed to farmers while Goldwater's extreme libertarian views on economic/agriculture policy were supposed to hurt farmers.

Johnson campaigned as a Westerner...no Democrat since actually bothered to do so sans the hapless McGovern.

Oil only started being discovered in Alaska in 1968 and that year Nixon won Alaska by just 1% and has been strongly republican ever since.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Native_Claims_Settlement_Act#Effect_of_land_conveyances

Nixon signing this native claims law allowed development on drilling and the transport of Oil in the state ever since. And afterwards there was migration from the rest of the country to oil industries and industries that were helped by the economic demand created from the oil industry which made the same people who moved and their descendants vote GOP because of opposition to the Democratic platforms recently that had a focus on Climate change which included restrictions on green house gas emissions.


As for why he didnt win California as much, SoCal excluding LA. which used to be the bastion of the republican party didnt swung towards him as much as other parts of the state did.

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Wait, did that one borough in Alaska actually swing to LBJ as much as Long County, Georgia did?

I have seen sources stating that farm policy was a decisive factor in many states, such as North Carolina, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, among others. But how does that explain the Pacific Northwest?

Bumping this up as I am still curious about the questions that I asked.

Great map. Does anyone know anything about the non-Southern counties that swung towards Goldwater?

Alaska going so heavily for Johnson is something I could never understand. He did five points better there than he did nationally.

I read something, somewhere, that Idaho was not too favorable towards the Civil Rights Act. Moreover, Goldwater's small-government conservatism probably played well there. Johnson however, still managed to flip the state.

Regarding the Pacific Northwest, or Oregon to be specific (Aside from some of the comments others have made regarding Johnson running as a Westerner:

1.) Oregon experienced a major spike in Net Migration into the State between 1960 and 1965....

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http://www.oregon.gov/das/OEA/Documents/OR_pop_trend2012.pdf

Much of this population growth occurred in traditionally historically Republican parts of the State in the Mid and Upper Willamette Valley....

These were generally places that were Ancestrally Republican going back to the days of the Civil War, where essentially there was a virtual line that separated "Pro Southern Secession" from those that supported the Abolitionist cause in the form of Abraham Lincoln....

That line roughly ends between the Lane County and Benton/Linn County borders, with the Southern Part of Western Oregon being "Pro-Southern", because of historical settlement patterns at the time of the Oregon Gold Rush, and North of that being areas essentially settled by "Yankees" from places like New England, Upstate New York, etc....

2.) Baby Boomers Coming of Voting Age

Both of my parents supported JFK in 1960, but were not yet of voting age, but were able to vote in the 1964 Presidential Election.

JFK appealed heavily to this age demographic, which comprised a significant share of the voting electorate in the 1964 Presidential Election in which you have President Johnson running on a campaign to expand the programs and vision that JFK supported and initiated.

So here's a map that shows the Median Population Age in April 1968 by State

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Now this doesn't sufficiently explain why Oregon, which actually had a relatively higher Median Aged population than many States swung heavily Democratic between '60 and '64....

Obviously this can explain why many of the former States of the Old Confederacy  not only having a relatively low median age, as well as a significant minority and Dixiecrat population didn't experience the major swings between '60 and '64 that we saw in many other parts of the country.

Still, it might potentially explain some swings on the margins in those Counties in the Western part of Oregon with a significant college/student population at a time of a massive increase in expansion of affordable College Education for all, as well as potentially some of the variances in the DEM '60 > '64 swings between regions in Oregon....

3.) JFK's "Catholic Problem"

One forgotten subtext of the 1960 Presidential Election was the extent to which Kennedy's religious background and affiliation might have well been a factor within the 1960 GE Environment....

Honestly I don't know to what extent this was an issue for Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential Election in Oregon, but at this time the State was pretty heavily Protestant, and it might well have played a bit on the margins, especially within the "Republican Strongholds" of the Central and Northern Willamette Valley.

Something to think about anyways....

4.) Swings within Multnomah County accounted for a huge chunk of the Oregon swings between '60 and '64....

This is perhaps the most significant data point, since Multnomah County accounted for a whopping 32% of the Presidential Votes in Oregon in 1960 (49-51 Nixon), and 31% in 1964  (66-34 Kennedy)....  a +32% SWING representing almost a third of the voters in the State!!!

Perhaps the biggest question should be why did JFK perform so poorly in MultCo in 1960????

It's difficult to think about the history of Portland, Oregon around this time period without thinking about the history of vice and political corruption not only during prohibition but decades after....

A.) In many ways the local shared historical narratives helped reinforce a conception that associated the "Democratic Party Big City Machine" with vice and corruption, especially in the Mid and late 1950s where local Media Stories were filled with stories related to the Mayor of Portland, Multnomah County Sheriff, Portland Police Department corruption, etc....

Here's a link to an 85 Page Academic Thesis that talks about Vice Crime and Political Corruption in Portland Oregon in the '40s and '50s...

https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4562&context=open_access_etds

http://www.oregonlive.com/history/2017/12/bizarre_local_vice_scandal_in.html

https://atomicredhead-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Ellis-Portland-Vice1.pdf

The extent of vice and corruption in Portland that caused a 1957 US Senate Investigation that helped launch the political career of Robert F. Kennedy, even inspired a "B-Rated Movie" called Expose Portland....

Portland Expose Clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwW8GkDw9ME

One might certainly make an argument that in the 1960 Presidential Election the extremely recent political scandals weighed heavily on the minds of voters as they had to consider a squeaky clean Richard Nixon who served as VP for the General himself who defeated Nazism and Fascism on the Western Front, or a relatively unknown political newcomer from a State/City that many on the West Coast might have well associated with Machine Politics and Political Vice and Corruption....

5.) Outside of MultCo, where you see the biggest swings overall, especially looking at Medium-Sized population centers is in the Central Willamette Valley.... Cities like Salem, Albany, Dallas, Eugene, Corvallis, as well as smaller regional population centers within these Counties, and rural areas as well....

What I *Suspect* may have been occurring in many of these Mid-Valley communities is that Liberal and Moderate Middle-Aged Republicans swung heavily Democrat in '64, not only despite their deeply embedded Lincoln Republican Protestant roots, but perhaps because of their deeply embedded Republican Protestant roots.

Looking at the County level map of the US, it appears that Johnson overall performed extremely well in Ancestral Abolitionist/Republican parts of the Country, which actually corresponds pretty well with the '60 > '64 Dem swings in Oregon.

6.) Not sure exactly what was going on in Eastern and Southeastern Oregon between '60 and '64, but interestingly enough Kennedy did much better in the "Mormon Belt" of Eastern Oregon than Johnson did (swings only), and Johnson performed much better (Comparing swings only) in the more traditionally Protestant Counties....

I might be completely and totally off-base here, but at least I believe it might provide some explanations for Presidential Election swings in Oregon in favor of the Democrats between '60 and '64....

Thoughts???

This appears to be a reasonable analysis. There were many ancestrally Republican regions of the country where Johnson did very well (such as in New England), and it is true that anti-Catholicism hurt Kennedy throughout much of the country in 1960, including in the Pacific Northwest.

Do you have any ideas as to why Colorado swung the way it did?

My opinion on this might not be taken seriously because I’m extremely PRO-Kennedy but even in my impartial analysis I genuinely feel like JFK was going to win ‘64 in a landslide regardless of opponent.

The West was an area where Goldwater's votes against public works cost him dearly - his vote against Hells Canyon Dam alone likely cost him Idaho. He also lost a lot of generally Republican farmers in Eastern WA/OR by opposing farm aid/subsidies.