1964 United States presidential election in Rhode Island

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Nominee Lyndon B. Johnson Barry Goldwater Party Democratic Republican Home state Texas Arizona Running mate Hubert Humphrey William E. Miller Electoral vote 4 0 Popular vote 315,463 74,615 Percentage 80.87% 19.13%

County results Municipality results Johnson   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90%   90–100%

President before election Lyndon B. Johnson Democratic President-elect Lyndon B. Johnson Democratic

The1964 United States presidential election in Rhode Island took place on November 3, 1964, as part of the1964 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all 50 states andD.C. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to theElectoral College, who voted forpresident andvice president.

Rhode Island voted overwhelmingly for theDemocratic nominee, incumbentPresidentLyndon B. Johnson ofTexas, over theRepublican nominee,SenatorBarry Goldwater ofArizona. Johnson ran with SenatorHubert H. Humphrey ofMinnesota, while Goldwater's running mate wasCongressmanWilliam E. Miller ofNew 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 theNortheastern United States as a right-wing extremist;^[3] he had voted against theCivil Rights Act of 1964, and the Johnson campaign portrayed him as a warmonger who as president would provoke a nuclear war.^[4] WhileJohn 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 forEisenhower andNixon 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 in2020, whenJoe Biden took 307,486 votes.^[5] No other state's highest raw vote total predates2008, whenJohn McCain set the record inAlaska andBarack Obama did so inMichigan. 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.

• Washington

Johnson swept all five counties in Rhode Island with over 70% of the vote. InProvidence 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. 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'svictory in Mississppi marked the last time a Presidential nominee won over 80% of the vote in a state.

• United States presidential elections in Rhode Island

• United States presidential elections in Rhode Island
• 1964 United States presidential election by state
• 1964 Rhode Island elections

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