Did Lyndon Johnson Underperform in 1964?

[Virginiá]

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.

[Virginiá]

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.

[Virginiá]

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!