1964 United States presidential election in Maine

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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 262,264 118,701 Percentage 68.80% 31.14%

County Results Municipality Results Johnson   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90%   90–100% Golwater   50–60%   60–70%   70–80%   80–90%   90–100% Tie   40–50%

President before election Lyndon Johnson Democratic Elected President Lyndon Johnson Democratic

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

Maine was won by incumbentDemocratic PresidentLyndon B. Johnson ofTexas in a landslide overRepublican U.S. SenatorBarry Goldwater ofArizona. Johnson took 68.8% of the vote to Goldwater's 31.14%, a victory margin of 37.66 percentage points, and the strongest-ever performance by a Democrat in the state. Johnson became the first Democrat sinceWoodrow Wilson in1912 to carry this longstandingliberal Republican stronghold, and the first sinceFranklin Pierce in1852 to win the state with an outright majority. Even amidst a national Democratic landslide, Maine weighed-in in this election as more than 15 points to the left of the nation at-large.

Johnson carried Maine by a wide margin of 37.66%, making him the first Democratic candidate sinceFranklin Pierce in1852 to win a majority (Wilson won the state in 1912 with only a plurality of 39.43%). Johnson was also the first Democrat to sweep all of Maine's counties.^[1]

He was the first Democrat to carrySomerset County sinceMartin Van Buren in1836,^[1] the first since Pierce to carry the counties ofFranklin,Oxford,Penobscot andPiscataquis and the first sinceWinfield S. Hancock in1880 to carryAroostook County.^[2] PopulousCumberland County, along withLincoln County, had last voted Democratic forWoodrow Wilson in 1912, while the counties ofHancock,Knox andWaldo had last supported a Democrat when giving Wilson a plurality in1916.^[2]

This would prove the last occasion Waldo County voted for a Democratic presidential candidate until1996,^[a] and last when Hancock, Knox, and Lincoln Counties would support a Democratic presidential nominee untilBill Clinton in1992. Johnson's 80.14% inAndroscoggin County is also the last time, as of 2020, that any candidate has broken 80% in any Maine county, and the first time that a Democrat has done so since1836. Johnson's winning margin of over 143,000 votes is the largest in history for a Democratic presidential candidate in Maine, only beaten by Republican Eisenhower's over 146,000 margin in1956.

• Aroostook
• Cumberland
• Franklin
• Hancock
• Kennebec
• Knox
• Lincoln
• Oxford
• Penobscot
• Piscataquis
• Sagadahoc
• Somerset
• Waldo
• Washington

Ever since the Republican Party formed in 1854 to stopthe spread of slavery intothe territories,Maine and nearbyVermont had been rock-ribbed Republican, except during the split of1912, when Maine went toWoodrow Wilson with less than forty percent of the vote. As recently as1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower had won over seventy percent of the vote in the state for the GOP.

However, at the same time the GOP was turning its attention from the declining rural Yankee counties to the growing and traditionally Democratic Catholic vote,^[4] along with the conservativeSun Belt whose growth was driven by air conditioning. This growth meant that activist Republicans centred in the traditionally Democratic, but by the 1960s, middle-class Sun Belt had become much more conservative than the majority of members in the historic Northeastern GOP stronghold.^[5]

The consequence of this was that a bitterly divided Grand Old Party was able to nominate the staunchly conservativeSenatorBarry Goldwater ofArizona, who ran with the equally conservative Republican National Committee chair,CongressmanWilliam E. Miller ofNew York. The staunchconservative Goldwater was widely seen in theliberalNortheastern United States as a right-wing extremist;^[6] 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.^[7]

In contrast toNew York,Pennsylvania,New Jersey,Massachusetts,Connecticut,Rhode Island andMichigan, Goldwater didnot write upper New England off from the beginning of his presidential campaign before Kennedy's assassination.^[8] However, Goldwater's self-avowed extremism was such that he was the first Republican disendorsed by many newspapers in the region since the party was founded.^[9] Polls never gave any doubt that Goldwater would lose Maine, despite considerable September campaigning by running mate Miller.^[10]

• United States presidential elections in Maine

• 1964 United States presidential election by state
• United States presidential elections in Maine
• 1964 Maine elections

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