17 0 65.6% 33.9% | 1,867,671 963,843 Start date November 3, 1964 | |
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The 1964 United States presidential election in New Jersey took place on November 3, 1964. All 50 states and the District of Columbia, were part of the 1964 United States presidential election. New Jersey voters chose 17 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the President and Vice President.
New Jersey was won overwhelmingly by the Democratic nominees, incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas and his running mate Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota. Johnson and Humphrey defeated the Republican nominees, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona and his running mate Congressman William E. Miller of New York.
Johnson carried New Jersey in a landslide with 65.61% of the vote to Goldwater’s 33.86%, a margin of 31.75%.
Johnson also swept all 21 of New Jersey’s counties, the first and as of 2017 only time a Democratic presidential nominee has ever done so. Johnson broke 60% of the vote in 15 counties, and also broke 70% of the vote in four: Hudson County, Mercer County, Middlesex County, and Cumberland County, besides falling just short of the mark in Essex County, where Johnson received 69.9%. Hudson County would be the most Democratic county, giving Johnson 73.5% of the vote. Goldwater’s strongest county was rural Sussex County, where he received 45.2% of the vote to Johnson’s 54.8%.
New Jersey in this era was usually a swing state with a slight Republican lean. But this normal pattern was broken in 1964, as Goldwater's staunch conservatism led many moderate Northeastern Republicans to view Goldwater as an extremist and defect to the Democrats that year. As Johnson won a massive landslide nationally, normally GOP-leaning New Jersey’s result would even be almost 10% more Democratic than the national average.