1964 United States presidential election in Rhode Island

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1964 United States presidential election in Rhode Island
Flag of Rhode Island.svg
  1960 November 3, 1964 (1964-11-03) 1968  
  37 Lyndon Johnson 3x4 (cropped).jpg Barry-Goldwater 1968.webp
Nominee Lyndon B. Johnson Barry Goldwater
Party Democratic Republican
Home state Texas Arizona
Running mate Hubert Humphrey William E. Miller
Electoral vote40
Popular vote315,46374,615
Percentage80.87%19.13%

Rhode Island Presidential Election Results 1964.svg
Rhode Island Presidential Election Municipality Results 1964.svg
Johnson
  50–60%
  60–70%
  70–80%
  80–90%
  90–100%

The 1964 United States presidential election in Rhode Island took place on November 3, 1964, as part of the 1964 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all 50 states and D.C. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.

Contents

Rhode Island voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic nominee, incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, over the Republican nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Johnson ran with Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, while Goldwater's running mate was Congressman William E. Miller of New York.

Johnson carried Rhode Island in a landslide, taking 80.87% of the vote to Goldwater's 19.13%, [1] a Democratic victory margin of 61.74%. This made Rhode Island Lyndon Johnson's strongest state in the nation: even in the midst of a massive nationwide Democratic landslide, Rhode Island weighed in as 39% more Democratic than the national average during the 1964 election. [2]

The staunch conservative Goldwater was widely seen in the Northeastern United States as a right-wing extremist; [3] 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. [4] While John F. Kennedy had won 63.63% in Rhode Island in 1960 mostly by sweeping the ethnic Catholic vote, for 1964, this traditional Democratic coalition was joined by mass defections of moderate Yankee Republicans who had voted for Eisenhower and Nixon but could not support Goldwater. [3] His landslide was so large, he won a record 315,463 votes, a record that still has not been beaten. The closest any candidate has come since then was in 2020, when Joe Biden took 307,486 votes. [5] Consequently, the incumbent Johnson was able to take more than 80% of the vote in liberal Rhode Island. Johnson's winning margin of over 240,000 votes is the largest in history for a presidential candidate in Rhode Island, with no one else even coming within 100,000 of that winning margin.

Results

Electoral results
Presidential candidatePartyHome statePopular voteElectoral
vote
Running mate
CountPercentageVice-presidential candidateHome stateElectoral vote
Lyndon B. Johnson Democratic Texas 315,46380.87%4 Hubert Humphrey Minnesota 4
Barry Goldwater Republican Arizona 74,61519.13%0 William E. Miller New York 0
Total390,078100%44
Needed to win270270

By county

CountyLyndon B. Johnson
Democratic
Barry Goldwater
Republican
Various candidates
Other parties
MarginTotal votes cast
# %# %# %# %
Bristol 14,30676.21%4,46623.79%00.00%9,84052.42%18,772
Kent 44,47678.34%12,29721.66%00.00%32,17956.68%56,773
Newport 19,78273.65%7,07826.35%00.00%12,70447.30%26,860
Providence 219,46583.48%43,43216.52%00.00%176,03366.96%262,897
Washington 17,43470.37%7,34229.63%00.00%10,09240.74%24,776
Totals315,46380.87%74,61519.13%130.00%240,84861.74%390,091

Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic

Analysis

Johnson swept all five counties in Rhode Island with over 70% of the vote. In Providence County, the most populated county, home to the state's capital and largest city, Providence, Johnson took 83.5% of the vote. [1] Washington County voted Democratic for the first time since 1852. This was the strongest showing ever for a Democratic presidential candidate in Providence County and the strongest performance of any candidate of any party in any county in Rhode Island. Johnson's 80.87% remains the highest vote share percentage any presidential candidate of either party has ever received in Rhode Island, [2] and his 61.74% victory margin remains the widest margin by which any candidate of either party has ever won the state. Additionally, Johnson's victory, alongside Goldwater's victory in Mississppi marked the last time a Presidential nominee won over 80% of the vote in a state.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections; 1964 Presidential General Election Data Graphs – Rhode Island
  2. 1 2 Counting the Votes; Rhode Island Archived 2017-01-11 at the Wayback Machine
  3. 1 2 Donaldson, Gary; Liberalism’s Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964; p. 190, ISBN   1510702369.
  4. Edwards, Lee and Schlafly, Phyllis; Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution; pp. 286–290 ISBN   162157458X.
  5. "Rhode Island Election Results". The New York Times. November 3, 2020. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved November 15, 2020.