Nov. 3, 1964 - America voted for a President today in a national election which showed signs from the start of a record surge to the polls and a heavy switch in party affiliations — two omens favoring Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson over Republican Barry Goldwater.
Reports from polling officials across the nation pointed to a national Presidential vote of between 71 and 72 million. The previous record was 68.9 million in the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960. A big vote traditionally has been considered a break for the Democrats.
The first trickle of returns, while too slight to establish a definite Presidential trend, did back up predictions that many Republicans would desert the GOP’s Goldwater-Miller ticket and go for LBJ and Hubert Humphrey.
With more than 3,500 of the nation’s 175,796 precincts reporting, the vote was Johnson 648,305, Goldwater 443,843.
Hart’s Location a tiny New Hampshire hamlet, which went for Nixon in 1960, gave Johnson 8, Goldwater 2 this time.
Mount Washington, Mass., another early-bird election town, went Democratic for President for the first time. It was Johnson 20, Goldwater, 13. The only small New England town to stick tight with tradition was Dixville Notch, N.H., whose eight voters went down the line for the GOP ticket.
These were only slight straws in the election wind, as were a scattering of precinct reports from Michigan, Virginia, and North Carolina. None of these suggested that a big upset, which Goldwater had predicted would confound the pollsters, was showing even an inkling of developing.
The first big puff of an election wind favoring Johnson came out of Kansas, which Nixon carried by 198,000 in 1960. Returns from 393 of the farm state’s 2,927 precincts gave Johnson 41,762, Goldwater 40,394.
Kansas last went Democratic in FDR’s 1936 sweep, when only Vermont and Maine backed the GOP’s Alf Landon.
From virtually all states came reports of a big vote. It was true in the cities, in suburbia, and out in the country.
All 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are involved in the election. The present House composition is 254 Democrats and 176 Republicans, with five vacancies. In the Senate, there are 66 Democrats, 34 Republicans.
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