The 1964 United States presidential election in California took place on November 3, 1964, as part of the 1964 United States presidential election. State voters chose 40 representatives, or electors, to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
California voted for the incumbent Democratic President, Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, in a landslide over the Republican nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona.
As Johnson won nationally in a massive landslide, taking 61.05% of the vote nationwide, and dominating many Northeastern and Midwestern states by record landslide margins, California weighed in at about 4% more Republican than the national average in the 1964 election. Johnson dominated in liberal Northern California, breaking 60% in many counties and even breaking 70% in Plumas County and the city of San Francisco. However, the Western conservative Goldwater, from neighboring Arizona, appealed to residents of conservative Southern California, where Johnson failed to break his nationwide vote average in a single county. Goldwater indeed won six congressional districts in suburban areas of Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties, and carried two heavily populated Southern California counties outright: Orange County and San Diego County, thus holding Johnson below the 60% mark statewide.
Although California has become a strongly Democratic state in recent elections, this was the only presidential election from 1952 to 1988 where the state was carried by a Democrat. As of the 2024 presidential election, this is also the last time that a Democrat has won the counties of Calaveras, Colusa, Glenn, Kern, Modoc and Tulare. Democrats would not win Nevada County until 2008; and Inyo County until 2020.
California was Barry Goldwater's best state in the modern day "blue wall", which were states won by the Democrats in every presidential election from 1992 to 2012. Johnson was the only Democrat prior to 1992 to carry all of the states of that future "blue wall". This is also the most recent presidential election where Los Angeles County voted more Republican than the state as a whole, as well as the last in which California did not register the most votes cast by a state (New York had more).
