Nov. 4, 1964 - Lyndon Baines Johnson was elected to a four-year term over Sen. Barry Goldwater yesterday in apparently the greatest popular-vote landslide in American history. Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota was elected Vice President.
With 270 of the nation’s 538 electoral votes needed for victory, the count showed:
Johnson — 486
Goldwater — 52
In the popular vote, returns from 135,595 of the country’s 175,796 precincts gave:
Johnson — 33,181,999
Goldwater — 21,286,247
Johnson’s devastating sweep through all sections but the Deep South, where Goldwater carried five states, kept the Democrats in control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
In Austin, Tex., Johnson appeared in the Municipal Auditorium to say that his victory was “a tribute to men and women of all parties.”
“It is a mandate for unity, for a Government that serves no special interest,” he said.
The election meant, he said, that “our nation should forget our petty differences and stand united before all the world.”
Goldwater did not concede last night. A spokesman announced that the Senator would make no statement until today in Phoenix.
But the totals were not the only marks of the massive Democratic victory. Traditionally Republican states were bowled over like tenpins — Vermont, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, among others.
In New York, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, riding Johnson’s long coattails, overwhelmed Sen. Kenneth Keating.
But ticket splitting was widespread. And in the South, Georgia went Republican: never in its history had it done so. Into the Goldwater column, too, went Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina — all part of the once solidly Democratic South.
But Johnson carried the rest of the South, including Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida — states that went Republican in 1960. He carried his home state of Texas by a large margin and won a majority of the popular vote in the Old Confederacy.
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