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538 members of the Electoral College 270 electoral votes needed to win | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 62.8%[1]  1.0 pp | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Johnson/Humphrey and red denotes those won by Goldwater/Miller. Numbers indicate electoral votes cast by each state. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The 1964 United States presidential election was the 45th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1964. Incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Republican Senator Barry Goldwater in a landslide victory. Johnson was the fourth and most recent vice president to succeed the presidency following the death of his predecessor and win a full term in his own right. Johnson won the largest share of the popular vote for the Democratic Party in history at 61.1%. As of 2024, this remains the highest popular vote percentage of any candidate since the advent of widespread popular elections in 1824.
Johnson took office on November 22, 1963, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and generally continued his predecessor's policies, except with greater emphasis on civil rights. He easily defeated a primary challenge from segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace to win the nomination. At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Johnson selected liberal Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey as his running mate. In the narrow Republican contest, conservative Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater defeated liberal New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton.
Johnson championed a series of anti-poverty programs, collectively known as Great Society, and his passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Goldwater espoused a low-tax, small-government philosophy with an aggressive foreign policy. Although he personally opposed segregation and previously supported the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and 1960, Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying it was unconstitutional. Democrats successfully portrayed Goldwater as a dangerous extremist, most infamously in the "Daisy" television advertisement. The Republican Party was divided between its moderate and conservative factions, with Rockefeller and other moderate party leaders refusing to campaign for Goldwater. Johnson led by wide margins in all polls during the campaign.
Johnson carried 44 states and the District of Columbia, which voted for the first time in this election. Goldwater won his home state and swept the five states of the Deep South, due to the Democratic Party's strong support of civil rights and desegregation. Except for Louisiana, the Deep South states had previously never voted for a Republican presidential candidate since the end of Reconstruction in 1877.
This was the last election in which the Democratic Party won a majority of the white vote, with 59% of white voters casting their ballot for Johnson over Goldwater. This was the last election in which the Democratic nominee carried Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska,[a] Kansas, or Oklahoma, and the only election ever in which the Democrats carried Alaska. This marked the first presidential election in history in which the Democrats carried Vermont, and conversely, the first in which the Republicans carried Georgia. As of 2024, this marks the last time that a Democratic presidential candidate has won more than 400 electoral votes.
This was also the last election until 1992 in which the Democrats carried California, Colorado, Illinois, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New Hampshire, or Vermont, as well as the last election until 2008 in which the Democrats carried Virginia or Indiana. As such, this was the most recent presidential election in which the entire Midwestern region voted Democratic. This is also the only election between 1952 and 1972 in which Richard Nixon did not appear on the Republican ticket. As of the 2024 election, this was the last time the Democratic Party won two consecutive elections with two different presidential nominees.
- ^ "National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789-Present". United States Election Project. CQ Press.
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