The Election: The Election: Nov. 4, 1964

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 (see The Senate and The Governors stories). In the end—with the possible exception of salvaging his home state of Ari-zona—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.