1964 United States presidential election in Maine
November 3, 1964
 
Nominee Lyndon B. Johnson Barry Goldwater
Party Democratic Republican
Home state Texas Arizona
Running mate Hubert Humphrey William E. Miller
Electoral vote 4 0
Popular vote 262,264 118,701
Percentage 68.80% 31.14%
County Results
Johnson
  50-60%
  60-70%
  70-80%
  80-90%

President before election

Lyndon Johnson
Democratic

 Elected President

Lyndon Johnson
Democratic

The 1964 United States presidential election in Maine took place on November 3, 1964, as part of the 1964 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all fifty states and D.C. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Maine was won by incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas in a landslide over Republican U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Johnson took 68.8% of the vote to Goldwater's 31.14%, a victory margin of 37.66 percentage points, and the strongest-ever performance by a Democrat in the state. Johnson became the first Democrat since Woodrow Wilson in 1912 to carry this longstanding liberal Republican stronghold, and the first since Franklin Pierce in 1852 to win the state with an outright majority. Even amidst a national Democratic landslide, Maine weighed-in in this election as more than 15 points to the left of the nation at-large.

Johnson carried Maine by a wide margin of 37.66%, making him the first Democratic candidate since Woodrow Wilson in 1912 to carry the state, and the first since Franklin Pierce in 1852 to win a majority (Wilson won the state in 1912 with only a plurality of 39.43%). Johnson was also the first Democrat to sweep all of Maine’s counties.[1] This is also the best Democratic performance in a presidential election in Maine to date.

He was the first Democrat to carry Somerset County since Martin Van Buren in 1836,[1] the first since Pierce to carry the counties of Franklin, Oxford, Penobscot and Piscataquis and the first since Winfield S. Hancock in 1880 to carry Aroostook County.[2] Populous Cumberland County, along with Lincoln County, had last voted Democratic for Woodrow Wilson in 1912, while the counties of Hancock, Knox and Waldo had last supported a Democrat when giving Wilson a plurality in 1916.[2]

This would prove the last occasion Waldo County voted for a Democratic presidential candidate until 1996,[lower-alpha 1] and last when Hancock, Knox, and Lincoln Counties would support a Democratic Presidential nominee until Bill Clinton in 1992. Johnson's 80.14% in Androscoggin County is also the last time, as of 2020, that any candidate has broken 80% in any Maine county, and the only time that a Democrat has done so.

Results

1964 United States presidential election in Maine[3]
Party Candidate Votes Percentage Electoral votes
Democratic (inc.) Lyndon B. Johnson 262,264 68.80% 4
Republican Barry Goldwater 118,701 31.14% 0
Write-ins Write-ins 256 0.07% 0
Totals 381,221 100.00% 4
Voter Turnout (Voting age/Registered) 65%/73%

Results by county

County Lyndon Baines Johnson
Democratic		 Barry Morris Goldwater
Republican		 Various Candidates
Write-ins		 Margin Total votes cast
#  % #  % #  % #  %
Androscoggin 30,080 80.14% 7,441 19.82% 14 0.04% 22,639 60.31% 37,535
Aroostook 17,552 63.71% 9,994 36.28% 3 0.01% 7,558 27.43% 27,549
Cumberland 50,844 69.39% 22,365 30.52% 63 0.09% 28,479 38.87% 73,272
Franklin 5,784 66.69% 2,887 33.29% 2 0.02% 2,897 33.40% 8,673
Hancock 7,415 53.98% 6,304 45.89% 18 0.13% 1,111 8.09% 13,737
Kennebec 24,813 68.65% 11,307 31.28% 23 0.06% 13,506 37.37% 36,143
Knox 7,022 61.43% 4,404 38.53% 4 0.03% 2,618 22.90% 11,430
Lincoln 5,099 56.07% 3,984 43.81% 11 0.12% 1,115 12.26% 9,094
Oxford 13,616 71.76% 5,340 28.14% 19 0.10% 8,276 43.62% 18,975
Penobscot 28,766 66.54% 14,449 33.42% 17 0.04% 14,317 33.12% 43,232
Piscataquis 4,781 65.84% 2,473 34.06% 7 0.10% 2,308 31.79% 7,261
Sagadahoc 7,006 71.93% 2,733 28.06% 1 0.01% 4,273 43.87% 9,740
Somerset 10,694 70.11% 4,541 29.77% 18 0.12% 6,153 40.34% 15,253
Waldo 5,397 61.87% 3,324 38.11% 2 0.02% 2,073 23.76% 8,723
Washington 9,312 70.88% 3,816 29.05% 9 0.07% 5,496 41.84% 13,137
York 34,083 71.80% 13,339 28.10% 45 0.09% 20,744 43.70% 47,467
Totals262,26468.80%118,70131.14%2560.07%143,56337.66%381,221

Analysis

Ever since the Republican Party formed in 1854 to stop the spread of slavery into the territories, Maine and nearby Vermont had been rock-ribbed Republican, except during the split of 1912 when the Pine Tree State went to Woodrow Wilson with less than forty percent of the vote. As recently as 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower had won over seventy percent of the vote in the state for the GOP.

However, at the same time the GOP was turning its attention from the declining rural Yankee counties to the growing and traditionally Democratic Catholic vote,[4] along with the conservative Sun Belt whose growth was driven by air conditioning. This growth meant that activist Republicans centred in the traditionally Democratic, but by the 1960s, middle-class Sun Belt had become much more conservative than the majority of members in the historic Northeastern GOP stronghold.[5]

The consequence of this was that a bitterly divided Grand Old Party was able to nominate the staunchly conservative Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who ran with the equally conservative Republican National Committee chair, Congressman William E. Miller of New York. The staunch conservative Goldwater was widely seen in the liberal Northeastern United States as a right-wing extremist;[6] he had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Johnson campaign portrayed him as a warmonger who as president would provoke a nuclear war.[7]

In contrast to New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Michigan, Goldwater did not write upper New England off from the beginning of his presidential campaign before Kennedy’s assassination.[8] However, Goldwater’s self-avowed extremism was such that he was the first Republican disendorsed by many newspapers in the region since the party was founded.[9] Polls never gave any doubt that Goldwater would lose Maine, despite considerable September campaigning by running mate Miller.[10]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Waldo County did give a plurality to Independent H. Ross Perot in 1992.

References

  1. 1 2 Menendez, Albert J.; The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004, p. 90 ISBN 0786422173
  2. 1 2 Menendez; The Geography of Presidential Elections in America; pp. 218-219
  3. ↑ "1964 Presidential General Election Results – Maine". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved February 7, 2013.
  4. ↑ Phillips, Kevin; The Emerging Republican Majority; pp. 55-60 ISBN 978-0-691-16324-6
  5. ↑ Nexon, David; ‘Asymmetry in the Political System: Occasional Activists in the Republican and Democratic Parties, 1956-1964’, The American Political Science Review, vol. 65, No. 3 (Sep., 1971), pp. 716-730
  6. ↑ Donaldson, Gary; Liberalism’s Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964; p. 190 ISBN 1510702369
  7. ↑ Edwards, Lee and Schlafly, Phyllis; Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution; pp. 286-290 ISBN 162157458X
  8. ↑ Kelley, Stanley junior; ‘The Goldwater Strategy’; The Princeton Review; pp. 8-11
  9. ↑ Kabaservice, Geoffrey; Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party; p. 120 ISBN 1511399031
  10. ↑ Andrew, John A.; The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (Perspectives on the Sixties series) p. 274 ISBN 0813524016
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