No one, not the President nor any of the major news organisations, could believe what the results were at first.
Despite their hard campaigning, it was revealed the support for the Dixiecrats was more akin to a few deep puddles then an ocean. Interestingly, they won the exact same 4 states as previous Dixiecrat challenger, Strom Thurmond, did in 1948. Thurmond was one of a few Southerners who not only endorsed them, but worked in getting them his states votes. They won more then three times the popular vote as he did, doing better in nearly every Southern state that Thurmond didn't win sixteen years ago, but they could only win these same four states. Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina. The states Johnson won in the South, sans Georgia where Goldwater made decent inroads, he won by a strong margin.
Barry Goldwater became the first major party nominee to lose every single state in the country. Even his home state Arizona voted against him by a margin of just 137 votes. Even in 1936, the last time a Democrat had won both over 500 electoral votes and his opponents state, the Republican's had at least won a couple of states in their tradition bastion of New England. Not so this year. Goldwater did not run for his Senate seat, which was narrowly won by fellow Republican Paul Fannin, and after the stress of this campaign he decided not to fight his way back to office after Carl Hayden retired in 1968. Longtime Goldwater ally Stephen Shadegg instead contested the election and won that seat.
