TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/64elect/64elect.009

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u>              y.                                                            ╚November 4, 1964

THE ELECTION

Mandate, Loud & Clear



     The dimensions of Lyndon Johnson's victory were
staggering. He won every one of the East's 142 electoral votes,
becoming the first Democratic President ever to carry Vermont,
the first since 1912 to win Maine. He made a clean sweep of the
Midwest, the Mountain and Border States, the West Coast,
appeared to have lost only Arizona in the Southwest. Only in the
South did Barry Goldwater score a breakthrough, capturing
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.

     Remarkably, the pattern of Democrat Johnson's victory was
strikingly similar to Republican Dwight Eisenhower's in 1956 --
only with the part loyalties reversed. [Eight years ago, Ike
lost only Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, the
Carolinas and the Border State of Missouri to Adlai Stevenson.]

     The Clingers. After a numbingly dull campaign, election
night promised to be almost as dreary. As soon as the first
returns trickled in from Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio at around
7 p.m. (E.S.T.), it became clear that Lyndon was headed for a
big victory. The only question was: How big? By 9 p.m., when
Vermont had plopped into the Democratic column and television's
psephologists flatly declared Johnson the winner, the answer
became obvious: very, very big. In fact, TV's impatient
forecasters were projecting final results with almost impudent
haste: CBS suavely announced Bobby Kennedy's victory over Ken
Keating in New York with no votes showing at all.

     Johnson's electoral margin of 486 to 52 votes (assuming he
loses Arizona's five) fell short of Franklin Roosevelt's record
523-to-8 victory over Alf Landon in 1936, but it was the second
best in history. Moreover, when the final returns are
tabulated, Johnson seems certain to be credited with the
greatest popular-vote margin in U.S. history -- some 61% of the
record 70 million votes cast, and a plurality of some 15 million
votes. In 1936, F.D.R. won 60.8% of the vote and had an
11,078,204-vote plurality.

     By themselves, the statistics were impressive enough. But
even more impressive was what they meant to coattail-clinging
Democratic candidates for Congress, governorships and state
legislatures. Only ticket splitting of incredible proportions
saved moderate Republicans such as Governor George Romney of
Michigan and Governor-elect Daniel Evans of Washington from
defeat; despite considerable splitting, New York's Ken Keating,
Illinois' Chuck Percy, Oklahoma's Bud Wilkinson went down. In
the Senate, Democrats were assured of retaining their lopsided
majority of 66 to 34, or even of increasing it. Thanks to
Lyndon's sturdy coattails, Democratic gubernatorial candidates
won in Indiana and West Virginia.

     Cashing the Checks. "I want the mandate of this election
to be written strong and clear," said the President, "so that
none will mistake the meaning." As far as figures are concerned,
the mandate could hardly have been written more clearly. But
since the figures meant anti-Goldwater as much as pro-Johnson,
carrying out the mandate will not follow automatically.

     During the campaign the President handed out blank checks
to dozens of disparate groups, and cashing them will require a
miracle of political statesmanship. Johnson promised a
Government "both thrifty and progressive"; it will have to be
both if he is to balance his budget and still put across
wide-ranging medicare, education and anti-poverty programs. Big
steel is pressing for higher prices; Lyndon's resistance could
turn some businessmen against him. Ford's 130,000 United Auto
Workers Union members threatened to strike by week's end;
Johnson's newly won prestige will be damaged if they do and the
strike is long.

     Deferred Decisions. With the campaign over, Johnson must
also make some long-deferred decisions. "More of the same" may
not keep Vietnam afloat much longer. Laos and the Congo remain
dangerously explosive. Domestically, the President must cope
with impatient Negro leaders, who agreed to call off civil
rights demonstrations during the campaign, but will be on the
march again if their demands are not met.

     Abroad, the President faces a panoply of problems. De
Gaulle's hints at a further French de-emphasis of NATO and the
uncertainty over Britain's defense posture point up the need
for major repairs on the Atlantic Alliance. Johnson's task is
complicated by the shaky underpinnings of so many governments.
In Britain, Prime Minister Harold Wilson has a fragile five-vote
majority in Parliament, which began its new session as the U.S.
was voting. Wilson is expected in Washington next month, but one
of his first acts was to proposed the nationalization of steel,
and if he keeps pushing such controversial legislation, he may
not be around for too long.

     In Moscow, a new B. & K. diarchy is in power, but unless
Brezhnev and Kosygin manage to work in tandem more effectively
than Bulganin and Khrushchev did, an internal power struggle
may grip Russia and becloud efforts for an East-West detente.
Peking's atomic blast may make it more difficult than ever for
the U.S. to keep nations along the periphery of Red China from
falling under its influence. In Latin America, Johnson must
take up the unfinished business of Fidel Castro, not to mention
such trouble spots as Bolivia.

     Finding the Way. Despite the problems, Lyndon Johnson is
now able to act with the confidence that he is President in his
own right. He has overwhelming encouragement to move and an
overwhelmingly Democratic Congress to help him move. But in
moving, he must be prepared to make enemies, unless he can
somehow keep business and labor, moderates and liberals, dozens
of often conflicting interests happily balanced.

     "I do not accept Government as just the `art of the
practicable,'" the President told a crowd in Austin on the eve
of his election. "It is the business of deciding what is right
and then finding the way to do it." There is little doubt that
if Lyndon Johnson wants desperately to do "what is right," and
if he finds the way most of the time, he will grandly merit the
astonishing tribute paid to him this week by his fellow
citizens.


Anatomy of Triumph

     When the land suddenly slides, most of the old familiar
patterns are obliterated -- and Johnson's triumph was achieved
by smashing across regional, economic and ideological lines
that had long held firm for the G.O.P. At the same time, he
drew massive support from all of the traditional Democratic
voting blocs and metropolitan machines to rack up huge
pluralities in the big cities.

     Only a massive defection of Republicans to Johnson --
based generally on the fear that Goldwater was simply too
unpredictable to be trusted with one of the highest positions of
leadership in the free world -- could account for Johnson's
sweep of New England and the Midwest.

     Town & Country. The small Protestant towns of New England
had long been strongholds of Yankee conservatism; yet Johnson
knocked them off consistently. Verona, Me., (pop. 435) went for
Johnson 139 to 55 -- almost an exact reversal of its 1960 margin
for Richard Nixon. Of Connecticut's 169 towns, Johnson won all
but eleven -- a feat unmatched even by Roosevelt. While
conservative on economic and domestic matters, New Englanders
tend to be internationally-minded -- and Goldwater's
trigger-happy image hurt him there. So did his confused stance
on social security, particularly since it was so publicly aired
by Fellow Republican Nelson Rockefeller in the New Hampshire
primary.

     The widespread fear that Goldwater might slash farm price
supports and downgrade the Rural Electrification Administration
helped lead to his sorry showing in the rural Midwest. Johnson
almost wiped out the big G.O.P. margins traditional in
downstate Illinois.

     [With his sister and brother-in-law, Jean and Stephen
Smith, Ethel and W. Averell Harriman.]

     He carried some rural areas of Wisconsin by an
unprecedented 60%. He took North Dakota's Ward County -- which
had gone to Nixon in 1960 -- by a margin of 2 to 1. At the same
time, Johnson also knocked down the normal Republican margins in
Midwest suburban areas, even carried Missouri's suburban St.
Louis County.

     In the Rocky Mountain states and the Far West, the
Goldwater campaign reached its high point at the time of his
nomination -- and it went downhill thereafter. Somehow, Lyndon
came off as more of a Westerner's Westerner than Barry, and
Goldwater emerged as the man who might upset defense-oriented
industry and much appreciated programs of federal aid.

     City Sweep. Johnson's greatest triumphs, however, came in
the nation's large cities. He cracked even such Republican
metropolitan areas as Indianapolis and Columbus, where the
G.O.P. suffered from lack of organization and apathy toward
Goldwater. Yet despite the prediction of a huge Johnson victory,
Democratic ward leaders proved far from complacent, turned out
their labor and minority blocs in spectacular fashion to produce
comfortable voting cushions. Johnson rolled up a record
400,000-vote margin in Philadelphia, some 70,000 better than
Jack Kennedy had done. He won New York City by a whopping
1,300,000, Baltimore by 155,000 (more than half of his hefty
Maryland margin). He led by some 650,000 in Chicago, 350,000 in
Detroit, 100,000 in Milwaukee, 300,000 in Los Angeles.

     A significant part of those margins was supplied by
Negroes, who had cast about 70% of their vote for Kennedy, but
this year voted nearly unanimously for Johnson because of
Goldwater's vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and his
advocacy of states' rights. This was no small factor, since an
estimated 6,000,000 Negroes were registered -- an increase of
about 1,000,000 since 1960. Some 95% of the registered Negro
voters in California trooped to the polls, turned in nearly
100% vote for Johnson.

     In four Negro precincts of Nashville, Tenn., the vote was
5,468 to 62 in L.B.J.'s favor. In Philadelphia's Negro wards,
Johnson rolled up 160,917 votes to 14,093 for Goldwater. In a
Negro precinct of Richmond, the vote was up 200% from 1960, and
it went for Johnson, 1,257 to 4. Negroes gave Johnson much of
his margin in Florida, went 98% for him in a Jacksonville
precinct.

     No Backlash. While Negroes voted in greater numbers than
ever before, the much discussed Northern white backlash -- the
defection of Democrats to Goldwater out of resentment of the
Negro civil rights drive -- did not show up. Philadelphia had
been racked by Negro riots; yet L.B.J.'s margin was huge.
Suburban Baltimore was considered rife for a backlash vote; yet
Johnson carried it. Western Kentucky whites proved far more
concerned about TVA and social security than the race issue,
voted for L.B.J. He even carried Gary, Ind., where racial
tensions were taut and Alabama's Governor George Wallace had
scored heavily in a presidential primary.

     The Johnson landslide also destroyed Republican theories
that there might be a large "silent vote" cast by conservatives
who had not voted regularly before and who did not want to tell
pollsters they planned to vote for Barry. Nor did large numbers
of voters pass up the presidential race out of apathy or
coolness toward both candidates. The presidential vote broke
all records. The magnitude of the President's conquest also
swept many other Democrats, such as Governor Otto Kerner in
Illinois and, most notably, Senate Candidate Robert Kennedy in
New York, to victory.

     Yet perhaps the most fascinating facet of the election was
the amazing amount of ticket splitting, as voters chose L.B.J.
-- and then skipped down the ballot to vote for deserving
Republican candidates.

     In the end -- with the possible exception of salvaging his
home state of Arizona -- all that Goldwater and his devoted
band of active amateurs got out of their many months of hard
work was the distinction of sufficiently upsetting the voting
patterns in the South to carry five states. And he triumphed in
those states mostly on the voters' belief that he would slow the
Negro revolution -- a stance which now seems to have little
future in U.S. politics.