Nov. 3, 1964 - The final political polls have predicted President Johnson should win the contest for President today by a majority of up to 20 million votes.
A victory of that magnitude would set a record. The biggest popular vote margin to date was the 11 million by which President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Alf Landon in 1936.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s reelection over Democrat Adlai Stevenson in 1956 was by a 9.5‐million vote plurality.
Significantly, all the professionally conducted voter opinion surveys, national and in states, are uniform in indicating a landslide for the Democratic ticket of Johnson and Senator Hubert Humphrey, over the Republican ticket of Senator Barry Goldwater and Representative William E. Miller.
The final report of Dr. George Gallup’s nationwide poll forecast a Johnson sweep by 64% of the popular vote to 36% for Goldwater. The final national poll of Louis Harris showed exactly this breakdown — 64% to 36%.
Samuel Lubell, whose report does not include percentage figures, predicted a “Johnson landslide.”
Only twice in this century have Presidential candidates achieved more than 60% of the overall vote. Roosevelt got 60.8 in 1936, and Warren G. Harding, a Republican, won with 60.4 in 1920.
The Eisenhower percentage eight years ago was 57.4. If the polls prove to be accurate and the total voter turnout today is in the neighborhood of 71 million, as expected by political observers, the Johnson‐Humphrey ticket would get approximately 45.4 million popular votes to 25.5 for the Goldwater‐Miller ticket.
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