1964: Republican states HEAVILY for LBJ

[FerrisBueller86]

LBJ received about 60% of the vote.  But some of the states where he did better than this are surprising when you consider that they were normally Republican states at the time or states that are culturally similar to the states Goldwater won.  In other words, LBJ didn't just win these states, but he won them by an EVEN BIGGER margin than he did nationally.  Note that the >60% LBJ states include:
1.  Alaska, 66%, always heavily Republican ever since
2.  Colorado, 61%, only won since then by Clinton in 1992 and only with Perot's help
3.  Missouri, 64%, culturally similar to the South
4.  Kentucky, 64%, ditto
5.  Vermont, 66%, went Republican again through 1988
6.  New Hampshire, 64%, went back to being heavily Republican (2nd most Republican in 1988) before changing in 1992

[WI_Dem]

Johnson was:
1. Wildly popular at the time
2. Running against Barry Goldwater

'Nuff said. ;-)

[FerrisBueller86]

Let's put it another way.

If we change the 1964 results to give Goldwater every state that Johnson won with less than 60% of the vote, the electoral map looks like:


Doesn't that look strange?  Several of the LBJ states on this revised map are states that normally voted Republican at the time.

[A18]

1.  Alaska, 66%, always heavily Republican ever since

This isn't really true. Alaska didn't become heavily Republican until the '80s.

[WI_Dem]

Indeed. Both Hawaii and Alaska were actually kind of swing states for a time. For instance, in 1960 they were both almost a tie between Kennedy and Nixon.

[memphis]

The 60% map looks like maps in 2000 and 2004. Goldwater looks like the modern Republican Party. It kind of makes sense.

[DanielX]

The 60% map looks like maps in 2000 and 2004. Goldwater looks like the modern Republican Party. It kind of makes sense.

Indeed, the only states that obviously don't fit:
1. California
2. Illinois
3. Texas
4. Alaska
5. Kentucky
Also, I have my doubts about Missouri, Colorado, and West Virginia, which would be classefied as Republican-leaning swing today (New Mexico and Ohio just swing).

[jimrtex]

Indeed. Both Hawaii and Alaska were actually kind of swing states for a time. For instance, in 1960 they were both almost a tie between Kennedy and Nixon.

They were added at the same time so that Republican Hawaii would balance Democrat Alaska.

[Harry Hayfield]

It's funnt that you should mention 1964 as I've just seen the FatBoy Slim video "Bird of Prey" which has THAT broadcast

http://boss.streamos.com/real/astralwerks/fatboy/bird_of_prey_300.ram (in Real Media Format)

Can someone explain to me what impact that broadcast had and why I (living in 2005) can't understand it's impact?

[Blank Slate]

It's funnt that you should mention 1964 as I've just seen the FatBoy Slim video "Bird of Prey" which has THAT broadcast

http://boss.streamos.com/real/astralwerks/fatboy/bird_of_prey_300.ram (in Real Media Format)

Can someone explain to me what impact that broadcast had and why I (living in 2005) can't understand it's impact?

There are a couple of reasons why on a subconscious level the TV ad you are mentioning, and in used in that video, the ad known as "Peace Little Girl (Daisy)" ad was important.

At the time of the 1964 elections don't forget what kind of atmosphere the U.S. was in, regarding the horrors of nuclear war.   There were two ways to show this, one was from a film that would later be released about concern for nuclear war and the other would be from a film from the time period (perhaps you've seen these):

1.   The one from the time was Peter Sellers' 1964 classic movie, "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb".

2.   And the more recent film (from 1998) that can explain that fear of the time would be the film taken from a Kinky Freeman's book (starring Christopher Walken, Brendan Fraser, Sissy Spacek and Alicia Silverstone):
"Blast From the Past".   In which during the Cuban missile crises of October 1962 (so back in 1964, an historically accurate event where the U.S. and the Soviet Union nearly went to nuclear war) the father played by Walken, decided to have his wife, played by Spacek and his young son, played later by Fraser go into their nuclear bomb shelter and then instead of a nuclear bomb, there was an airplane crash on to their property.   Very funny movie by the way, but it clearly expresses the worry many people had about nuclear war back in the early and mid-1960's and even as late as the 1980's (with such TV shows as diverse as the original "Star Trek" episodes to ABC's November 1983 movie, "The Day After" addressing and speaking to those fears).     

But to the 1964 TV ad in question, "Peace Little Girl (Daisy)", and it's affect on the outcome of the 1964 election.   After Kennedy won a close election in 1960, JFK hired a Madison Avenue firm to work on TV advertisements for the Democratic party in 1964, in September 1963.  The thing about that was that Madison Avenue had cooled to helping the Democrats after the way Stevenson had run his campaigns in 1952 and 1956 respectively.   But the agency JFK had hired in September 1963 was one that had had very effective ads for such companies as Avis:  Rent A Car.   

Later after JFK had been slain, the company was still working with the Democrats and seen as Goldwater's weakest aspect of his campaigns was how he would lead Vietnam conflict into a nuclear war.   So during NBC's Movie of the Week on September 7, 1964 the Democratic party aired the "Peace Little Girl (Daisy)" ad and it made quite impression on the fears that many felt at that time about going to nuclear war.   Heck the ad didn't even mention Goldwater by name, but it was enough.   The Republican party and Goldwater's campaign complained to the FCC to remove the ad, saying it was misleading of Goldwater's stance and the FCC and the networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS; cable wasn't in existence at that time) complied a few days later, by removing it from primetime.   But in doing that, the evening news picked up the ad and what the Republican party and the FCC did and so the ad was now being shown on the evening news for several days and weeks after, and the girl in the ad even made the front cover of TIME.    Because of that Goldwater campaign could never recover, and with help from that ad and fears in  the U.S. (plus several other reasons) LBJ was able to win the landslide he did.

[Calthrina950]

In addition to the states here, Johnson also got 62% in Iowa, which was a normally Republican stronghold at the time, having voted for Nixon by double digits in 1960, and 66% in New Jersey, which was a Republican-leaning state from the 1940s to the 1980s (it had narrowly voted for Kennedy in 1960 thanks to his strong performance among Catholic and blue-collar voters, but went Republican in the other close elections of 1948, 1968, and 1976). Johnson is the only Democrat to have gotten over 60% in Ohio.

And Colorado, as noted, was generally a Republican state in those days. From 1940-2004, the state only voted Democratic three times (1948, 1964, 1992), and Johnson's landslide win was bordered on each side by easy victories for Nixon in close elections. Johnson's 61.27% is the second-highest percentage any Democrat has ever received in the state, behind only William Jennings Bryan's 84.95% in 1896.

[Schiff for Senate]

LBJ received about 60% of the vote.  But some of the states where he did better than this are surprising when you consider that they were normally Republican states at the time or states that are culturally similar to the states Goldwater won.  In other words, LBJ didn't just win these states, but he won them by an EVEN BIGGER margin than he did nationally.  Note that the >60% LBJ states include:
1.  Alaska, 66%, always heavily Republican ever since
2.  Colorado, 61%, only won since then by Clinton in 1992 and only with Perot's help
3.  Missouri, 64%, culturally similar to the South
4.  Kentucky, 64%, ditto
5.  Vermont, 66%, went Republican again through 1988
6.  New Hampshire, 64%, went back to being heavily Republican (2nd most Republican in 1988) before changing in 1992

VT and NH make a lot of sense. They were GOP strongholds, but were filled with northeastern, socially liberal ("Rockefeller") Republicans. Eisenhower and to a lesser extent Nixon embodied these values, while Goldwater was perceived as a radical, racist conservative - precisely the opposite of the type of candidates New England voters liked. These were ancestrally Republican votes who'd stayed Republican against FDR, but who drew the line at supporting a perceived racist. Nixon wasn't considered nearly as racist or radically conservative as Goldwater, so he won back the key voting bloc of moderate voters in New England that formed the backbone of that region's GOP.

And MO makes some sense (though I'd imagined the margin to be somewhat smaller). Only Southeast MO is culturally similar to the south; unlike other southern states, by 1904 MO established its status as a swing state  (by going to Roosevelt). Northern Missouri was and is less culturally similar to the south than Southern Illinois. Southwest Missouri was a GOP stronghold, but it wasn't inclined to support perceived radicals like Goldwater. (Most of Southwest MO broke for Johnson, though a couple of counties in the region did go red.) The rest of the state (excluding Southeast MO, obviously) isn't culturally similar to the south, either. And even Southeast MO was less Deep South, racist Dixtiecrat - type than Southern states, more labour-orientated and more dependent on government programs (and more concerned about them than denying voting rights to African-Americans). Consequently, the only red counties in Missouri were a handful scattered throughout the state. There was no part of Missouri truly affiliated even remotely to the Deep South - Southeast Missouri, in some ways, but not in 1964.

[Tartarus Sauce]

LBJ received about 60% of the vote.  But some of the states where he did better than this are surprising when you consider that they were normally Republican states at the time or states that are culturally similar to the states Goldwater won.  In other words, LBJ didn't just win these states, but he won them by an EVEN BIGGER margin than he did nationally.  Note that the >60% LBJ states include:
1.  Alaska, 66%, always heavily Republican ever since
2.  Colorado, 61%, only won since then by Clinton in 1992 and only with Perot's help
3.  Missouri, 64%, culturally similar to the South
4.  Kentucky, 64%, ditto
5.  Vermont, 66%, went Republican again through 1988
6.  New Hampshire, 64%, went back to being heavily Republican (2nd most Republican in 1988) before changing in 1992

VT and NH make a lot of sense. They were GOP strongholds, but were filled with northeastern, socially liberal ("Rockefeller") Republicans. Eisenhower and to a lesser extent Nixon embodied these values, while Goldwater was perceived as a radical, racist conservative - precisely the opposite of the type of candidates New England voters liked. These were ancestrally Republican votes who'd stayed Republican against FDR, but who drew the line at supporting a perceived racist. Nixon wasn't considered nearly as racist or radically conservative as Goldwater, so he won back the key voting bloc of moderate voters in New England that formed the backbone of that region's GOP.

It also must be kept in mind that Goldwater's overtures to the South and hard-nosed conservatism weren't just incidental features that unsettled the GOP's traditional voters into rejecting his candidacy. His campaign was an unrelentingly hostile insurgency against the old-line moderate East Coast Republican establishment that said northern Republican Yankees voters were attached to. His whole run for president was a giant middle finger to their identity.

[Calthrina950]

LBJ received about 60% of the vote.  But some of the states where he did better than this are surprising when you consider that they were normally Republican states at the time or states that are culturally similar to the states Goldwater won.  In other words, LBJ didn't just win these states, but he won them by an EVEN BIGGER margin than he did nationally.  Note that the >60% LBJ states include:
1.  Alaska, 66%, always heavily Republican ever since
2.  Colorado, 61%, only won since then by Clinton in 1992 and only with Perot's help
3.  Missouri, 64%, culturally similar to the South
4.  Kentucky, 64%, ditto
5.  Vermont, 66%, went Republican again through 1988
6.  New Hampshire, 64%, went back to being heavily Republican (2nd most Republican in 1988) before changing in 1992

VT and NH make a lot of sense. They were GOP strongholds, but were filled with northeastern, socially liberal ("Rockefeller") Republicans. Eisenhower and to a lesser extent Nixon embodied these values, while Goldwater was perceived as a radical, racist conservative - precisely the opposite of the type of candidates New England voters liked. These were ancestrally Republican votes who'd stayed Republican against FDR, but who drew the line at supporting a perceived racist. Nixon wasn't considered nearly as racist or radically conservative as Goldwater, so he won back the key voting bloc of moderate voters in New England that formed the backbone of that region's GOP.

And MO makes some sense (though I'd imagined the margin to be somewhat smaller). Only Southeast MO is culturally similar to the south; unlike other southern states, by 1904 MO established its status as a swing state  (by going to Roosevelt). Northern Missouri was and is less culturally similar to the south than Southern Illinois. Southwest Missouri was a GOP stronghold, but it wasn't inclined to support perceived radicals like Goldwater. (Most of Southwest MO broke for Johnson, though a couple of counties in the region did go red.) The rest of the state (excluding Southeast MO, obviously) isn't culturally similar to the south, either. And even Southeast MO was less Deep South, racist Dixtiecrat - type than Southern states, more labour-orientated and more dependent on government programs (and more concerned about them than denying voting rights to African-Americans). Consequently, the only red counties in Missouri were a handful scattered throughout the state. There was no part of Missouri truly affiliated even remotely to the Deep South - Southeast Missouri, in some ways, but not in 1964.

Strangely enough, Missouri had a Kennedy-Goldwater county: Osage County. Osage County, along with Camas and Custer Counties, ID, Emmons County, ND, and Dorchester County, MD, was one of the few counties outside of the old Confederacy to shift from Kennedy to Goldwater. I'm assuming it was because of Catholicism: the county has several private Roman Catholic schools. Aside from Osage County, Cole County was the only other county in Missouri to swing Republican that year, and was won by Goldwater (Nixon had also carried it in 1960). I'm not sure what happened there. But the remainder of the state swung to Johnson, with the greatest swings occurring in ancestrally Republican SW Missouri and across much of SE Missouri, where Kennedy had lost considerable ground compared to Stevenson due to anti-Catholicism.

[OSR stands with Israel]

This is how each state voted in relation to the NPV in 1964

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I know this isn’t exactly a novel point to anyone here but I really think it’s just an illustration of how much more elastic the entire electorate was in that era. People had long-standing party loyalties but they also were more likely to break overwhelmingly against an unfavorable member of their party in the right circumstances.

[Calthrina950]

I know this isn’t exactly a novel point to anyone here but I really think it’s just an illustration of how much more elastic the entire electorate was in that era. People had long-standing party loyalties but they also were more likely to break overwhelmingly against an unfavorable member of their party in the right circumstances.

This is certainly true. I've been obsessively comparing Eisenhower's 1956 landslide reelection with Johnson's 1964 landslide, and it's astonishing how closely the two parallel each other, and contrast each other. Johnson won every Eisenhower state except for Arizona and Louisiana, besides carrying the Stevenson states of Arkansas, Missouri, and North Carolina, while Goldwater won the four Stevenson states in the Deep South. In many states, the results are almost the exact opposite from Eisenhower to Johnson. In others - particularly in the Northeast, but also in states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin - Johnson won landslides in areas that had gone heavily for Eisenhower.

[Skill and Chance]

This is how each state voted in relation to the NPV in 1964

Wow.  Some of the Midwest looks like residual Catholic goodwill from his ties to Kennedy.  LBJ also really held the Border State New Dealers well.

[Calthrina950]

This is how each state voted in relation to the NPV in 1964

Wow.  Some of the Midwest looks like residual Catholic goodwill from his ties to Kennedy.  LBJ also really held the Border State New Dealers well.

Johnson actually did slightly worse among Catholics than Kennedy in 1960. You can see this with the flip of heavily Catholic Osage and Emmons Counties to Goldwater and the relatively weak swings to Johnson in other Catholic-influenced counties like Ellis County, Kansas. But he did significantly better than Kennedy among Protestants, and the massive pro-Johnson swings in Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania, to provide some examples, in areas where Kennedy had suffered greatly from anti-Catholicism, are evidence of this.