Did Lyndon Johnson Underperform in 1964?

[Sir Mohamed]

Good question. He could have done better in terms of the electoral votes; as you pointed out, AZ was very close. 486-52 is actually weak compared to other landslides; Nixon in 1972 and FDR in 1936 both breaked 60%, but won 520-13 and 523-8. Reagan outperformed it twice, although he was more than ten points short in 1980 (489 EVs and 50.7% vs. LbJ's 486 EVs and 61.1%). Even John Anderson took more votes from him than from Carter.

GA and SC were winable for LBJ and maybe LA. But he was not on the ballot in the latter, for whatever reason (just "unpledged Democratic voters").

As far as the PV is concerned, he could have done better with RFK as his running mate. But both didn't like each other and LBJ wanted to prove that he is able to win an election without a Kennedy on the ticket. However, I think that HHH was a smart choice for the ticket balance.

I always wondered why he didn't break 60% in California (he got 59.1%).


Maybe this would have been possible with RFK:

President Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX)/Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (D-MA): 511 EV. (62.7%)
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)/Congressman William Miller (R-NY): 27 EV. (36.7%)

[Sir Mohamed]

I always wondered why he didn't break 60% in California (he got 59.1%).

When you consider that this was the only time California voted Republican between 1948 and 1992 and that Goldwater was from a border state, I'm actually impressed Johnson did that well. That's more than Nixon '72 and Reagan'84 got in the state.

No Democrat until Obama would win the state by as much as LBJ did.

Yup, agreed, can't believe my original post here is from 2015. CA even elected a R-senator that year, voting out Pierre Sallinger, who was appointed by Gov. Brown a few months before.

FDR won 66% of the vote in 1936 though, actually a record I thought Biden could break in 2020.