U.S. presidential election, 1964

Red states supported Johnson; blue states supported Goldwater.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 created a unique climate for the 1964 elections. Voters were saddened by the loss of the charismatic president, and opposition candidates were put in a very awkward situation.

Theodore H. White began his second book in his Making of the President series, The Making of the President, 1964, by talking about the assassination of the president. The first chapter of his book is entirely devoted to the assassination and the funeral.

Democratic nomination

The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, capitalized on this situation, using a combination of the national mood and his own political savvy to push Kennedy's agenda; most notably, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By the time of the national convention, Johnson was unassailable, and easily won the Democratic nomination.

At that time there was no provision for replacing a Vice President, so the office was vacant. Johnson chose Senator Hubert H. Humphrey as his running mate.

Republican nomination

The Republican Party was more divided. Richard Nixon, who had been beaten by Kennedy in a close election, and subsequently lost the 1962 election for Governor of California, decided not to run. Barry Goldwater, a Senator from Arizona, was the champion of the conservative wing of the party, which was dissatisfied with what it perceived as the dominance of the party's Eastern liberal wing. Goldwater was opposed most notably by Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor of New York, and William Scranton, the Governor of Pennsylvania.

In the New Hampshire primary, the voters gave a surprising victory to the Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Nixon's running mate in 1960 and a former Massachusetts senator, who was a write-in candidate.

Despite this defeat, Goldwater won the nomination, helped partly by an endorsement from Nixon. In accepting his nomination, he uttered his most famous phrase: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

General election

The New York Times front page from the day after the election: November 4, 1964.

Although Goldwater had been successful in rallying conservatives, his charisma seemed to be inadequate for the general election. Shortly before the Republican convention, he had alienated some Republicans by his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Johnson championed and signed into law. Goldwater argued that it was a matter for the individual states rather than federal legislation.

Johnson positioned himself as a moderate, and succeeded in portraying Goldwater as an extremist. Goldwater had a habit of making blunt statements about war, nuclear weapons, and economics that could be turned against him. Most famously, the Johnson campaign broadcast a television commercial dubbed the "Daisy Girl" ad, which featured a little girl picking petals from a daisy in a field, counting the petals, which then segues into a launch countdown and a nuclear explosion. The ads were in response to Goldwater's advocacy of "tactical" nuclear weapons use in Vietnam. Voters increasingly viewed Goldwater as a rightwing fringe candidate -- his slogan "In your heart, you know he's right" was successfully parodied by the Johnson campaign into "In your guts, you know he's nuts," or "In your heart, you know he might."

The election was held on November 3, 1964. Johnson crushed Goldwater in the general election, winning 61.0 percent of the popular vote, the largest percentage ever recorded (i.e. since the 1824 election). In the end, Goldwater won only his native state of Arizona and five Deep South states that had been increasingly alienated by Democratic Civil Rights policies. Because states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia had not voted Republican in any Presidential election since Reconstruction, this was a major transition point for the South, and an important step in the process by which the Democrats' former "Solid South" became a Republican bastion.

See also: President of the United States, U.S. presidential election, History of the United States (1964-1980).