On November 3, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson was re-elected by the largest popular vote margin in U.S. history, crushing his conservative opponent, Republican Barry Goldwater. Johnson received 61 percent of the vote, topping the previous record set by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and carried 44 states for a total of 486 electoral votes. The election also produced the biggest Democratic majority in the House of Representatives since 1936. The New York Times summed up that “Barry Goldwater not only lost the presidential election yesterday but the conservative cause as well.”[1] At the time, most political analysts agreed with these declarations.
Yet, just two years later, the GOP, led by Goldwater-inspired conservatives, made a remarkable comeback, gaining 47 seats in the House, four seats in the Senate, and eight governorships. Moreover, just 16 years after the Goldwater debacle, Republican Ronald Reagan, running as an unapologetic conservative, won the first of two landslide presidential elections. As columnist-commentator George Will put it, Barry Goldwater lost 44 states but won the future.
