Chase Smith does worse than Goldwater, largely because of sexism.
She wins nothing.
Wallace sweeps the South (with the exception of Texas), while Johnson wins everything else.
The idea that Smith wouldn't have carried a single state because of "sexism" is stuff and nonsense. It is the kind of garbage that people come to believe due to their nutty college professors and half-baked activists who are able to get TV time. If that were really true, Smith would not have ever been elected to the Senate in Maine. (And she was elected to the Senate in her own right, even though she had earlier been elected to the House to succeed her own husband.) She was what Hillary Clinton would have been if Hillary Clinton were a decent person. She was long-widowed in 1964, and had been on Eisenhower's short list of VP candidates in 1952.
Margaret Chase Smith represented the best of Moderate Republicanism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_ConscienceShe stated the basic principles of "Americanism" were:
^^^The right to criticize;
^^^The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
^^^The right to protest;
^^^The right of independent thought.
She took on Sen. Joe McCarthy when it could ruin her entire life, let alone her career. She was a Massive FF, and that fact was recognized in her own time, much more than people think today.
The Democratic administration has greatly lost the confidence of the American people by its complacency to the threat of communism and the leak of vital secrets to Russia through key officials of the Democratic administration. There are enough proved cases to make this point without diluting our criticism with unproved charges.
Surely these are sufficient reasons to make it clear to the American people that it is time for a change and that a Republican victory is necessary to the security of this country. Surely it is clear that this nation will continue to suffer as long as it is governed by the present ineffective Democratic Administration.
Yet to displace it with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation. The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny -- Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.
I doubt if the Republican Party could -- simply because I don't believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest.
Where are the Democrats of today with such a tack? Margaret Chase Smith had the courage to take on the Cancel Culture of the early 1950s. I see no Democrat having such courage today. But I digress.
Margaret Chase Smith would have carried the states I listed because she (A) was a properly partisan Republican who could compel Republicans to vote for her. She wouldn't have won the election, but it would not have been a Goldwaterite disaster. And if the Bobby Baker scandal may have been a bigger deal had she been the nominee.
The Wallace states I picked would likely have been Wallace states because, like in 1948, individual Southern states would have named Democratic electors pledged to a "Dixiecrat" ticket. I also believe that VA, TN, and FL, three (3) states that went for Eisenhower both times, would have voted for Smith narrowly. TN and FL had areas where Republicans were established locally and VA hadn't gone for the Democratic nominee since 1948 at that time.
A better question would be: What kind of President would Margaret Chase Smith have been?
Margaret Chase Smith would have never adopted a Southern Strategy. She would have been an unequivocal Civil Rights Republican. She would have been an Eisenhower Republican on Civil Rights, only better, because Eisenhower never truly stood up to segregationists. (Eisenhower was far more sympathetic to the South than Smith, and was OK with "going slower" on integration.) She would likely not have involved America in the Vietnam War to the extent LBJ did; she would not have escalated the matter massively in fear of being the President that "lost Vietnam". How effective she would have been in getting the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act passed is another matter; it is not really questioned that LBJ got that done because he could call in favors from Senators, but Margaret Chase Smith would have had the moral force of the argument on her side, and it's arguable that no Democrats that voted for Civil Rights Bills for LBJ would have opposed them if Smith were President.
Margaret Chase Smith would have nominated the best possible candidates for the SCOTUS regardless of ideology. There would have been no Haynesworth/Carswell debacles, and she would have not picked a mediocrity such as Warren Burger to be Chief Justice. (She'd likely have chosen Potter Stewart to succeed Earl Warren.) There would have been no Great Society with Margaret Chase Smith, but there would have been some social welfare programs instituted to combat hunger and poverty. It is possible that such programs she would have implemented would not have had the unintended consequence of fostering unwed pregnancies and single parenthood as a way of life.
She would have been a bi-partisan President; the conservative Goldwaterites would never have fully warmed to her (she'd have been viewed as a "Dime Store New Dealer"), but the moderate and liberal wing of the GOP would not have disappeared as it did (for the most part) as did happen over a rather short span of time. Her party would certainly have pulled her rightward, and there would have been lots of concern for what kind of Republican would have been nominate in 1972. But a Smith Presidency would have inevitably meant that there was a different set of issues in 1972. I believe that there would have not been a Vietnam War under a President Smith. I believe that, unlike LBJ and Nixon, she would have governed largely as a Peacetime President.
What might have been always seems more attractive than what was and is. I do think that Smith would have been a top-tier President in the Eisenhower mold.
