Goldwater gains outside the south

[Calthrina950]

As mentioned above, Idaho was one region of the country where Goldwater gained over Nixon. 1964 was the last time that Idaho voted Democratic. It was Johnson's closest win that year, as he carried it by 1.83%. Goldwater flipped Camas and Custer Counties, and in six other counties-Butte, Gooding, Lemhi, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Jerome-he ran ahead of Nixon's 1960 voteshare. Idaho also had one of the weakest swings of any state in the country (alongside Florida), as Nixon had won the state by 7.56%. I've read that civil rights was very unpopular in Idaho, and Idaho was already one of the most conservative states in the West by that point. Johnson did well enough in the traditionally Democratic Panhandle to flip the state.

As for Emmons County, its shift towards Goldwater can be attributed to the "Catholic" effect. Johnson did marginally worse among Catholics nationwide than Kennedy had, although he more than compensated for this minor drop by significantly outperforming Kennedy among Protestants, winning a solid majority of them (while Kennedy had obviously lost them in 1960). It may be similar to how Elk County, Pennsylvania and some other Catholic areas in Louisiana and elsewhere swung to Hoover in 1932, despite Hoover losing by a massive landslide to Franklin Roosevelt.

[Calthrina950]

Really is pretty remarkable how uniform and complete Johnson's landslide was. Really shows just how toxic Goldwater was to the entire country, even the deep south. It's pretty obvious that he only won those few southern states off of what were essentially single-issue racial segregation voters at that point.

The Sixth Party System equivalent would have been something like the Democratic Party nominating Bernie Sanders in 2004.

1964 is one of my favorite elections to analyze and read about, because it's the last time that the Democrats won a landslide and carried several states which will probably never vote Democratic in my lifetime.