Look at this electoral map from the 1960 presidential election:

[MineralMan]

It's very interesting to compare this to more recent elections. Especially notable is the red California and blue Texas. Politics have shifted somewhat since that election.

I was too young to vote in 1960, and was just a sophomore in High School, but it was the first presidential election that I took part in through campaigning. It was also notable for the age of the Democratic candidate. In those days, you still had to be 21 to vote, so I didn't get to vote for a President until 1968, and that was a very strange election, indeed. Here's the same map for 1968. What has happened to Texas?

[Cooley Hurd]

1. I made my bones on the McGovern campaign in 1972

...at the age of 7. Mom brought me down to the county Dem HQ to stuff envelopes.I also recall my brother (who was 13) and I going door-to-door dropping off literature. Here's Lil Cooley at the time:

[MineralMan]

3. Wonderful!

I also went door-to-door in 1960, handing out JFK literature. I've been doing that ever since, wherever I have lived. Only the literature and the candidates have changed. I couldn't vote but I could campaign.

Well, my appearance has changed, too, since 1960. I couldn't have grown much of a beard back then.

[Enthusiast]

29. I was happy to cast my first vote for George McGovern.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. If you want to have fun look at a map of the 76 election./NT

[MineralMan]

4. Yes, and here it is:

[Enthusiast]

30. That is nuts!

[Man from Pickens]

5. That was 54 years ago

you may as well bring up maps from the 1800s, for all their relevance to the modern day

[MineralMan]

6. Yes, it was. And in that election, the U.S. elected

its youngest President ever. Many people today remember that election, and the distribution of the electoral vote is interesting, even today. That 1960 election was an important one, for many reasons. If you think there is no relationship between it and today, you're wrong. The people who remember that election represent a large segment of the current voting public, and they're still voting with very high turnouts.

Another interesting feature of the 1960 and 1968 maps I posted is the odd fact that third party candidates actually got some electoral college votes in both elections. Notice the states where that happened. People openly voted for racists back in those days. These days, it's not so openly done.

History is important.

[Cooley Hurd]

7. That's not a valid point.

1960 was from the midst of the Civil Rights movement. Maps from the 1800's (long before the movement) would not have this to factor in.

[MineralMan]

8. I added a map from 1968, too, to the OP

In both elections, third parties actually got some electoral votes in southern states.

[Gman]

22. The civil rights movement was only getting going in

1960. It was there but ignored. MLK's emergence later in the 60's brought the movement to the forefront. And the movement and subsequent civil rights legislation put conservative Democrats in the GOP.

[Bluenorthwest]

10. I think one lesson people could pick up is that the States which today seem to be Democratic by

decree of nature were in reality made Democratic by hard work and electoral activism along with the tides of time. People from conservative States often dismiss Democratic victories in States like CA or Oregon as easily accomplished and eternal while they make their case as to why their own State could never, ever, ever go Democratic. They just say 'this is not California' or 'Oregon isn't really America'.
But Texas used to be Democratic while California was a Republican wonderland. Both things could be that way again....

[oldandhappy]

9. Thank you.

Memories.

My first vote was in 1960. I was stunned with the responsibility for my one vote.

[MineralMan]

12. Yes. I couldn't wait to vote when I turned 21.

At the time, I was in the USAF, in 1966. I was at Russian Language School at Syracuse University, and had to write a letter home to my county clerk's office in California to request an absentee ballot. First, though, I had to write to request a form so I could register to vote, since I turned 21 out of the state. I started early to make sure that everything would get done in time to vote in that mid-term election.

In that election Pat Brown, Jerry's dad, was running against Ronald Reagan. I cast my vote for Brown. I don't remember the other races on that ballot any longer, but I knew I did not want Ronald Reagan as Governor of California.

There was never a question for me regarding whether or not I would vote. How could I not vote? I don't even understand the question. Voting is a duty, a right, a privilege and a responsibility we all have. Not voting? That's unthinkable to me. It's still unthinkable to me. It simply doesn't compute at all. And yet, people don't vote, even if all they have to do is register and vote right where they live. Bizarre!

[LeftInTX]

32. Russian Language School....hmmm

My AF dad made me take Spanish. (To be fair, they didn't offer Russian in 8th grade)

[bigwillq]

11. I love looking at these kinds of maps.

Thanks for posting.

[MineralMan]

13. My pleasure. I'd love to see an animated sequence showing

each presidential elections to see how the voting pattern changes over time. I don't have time today to create the animated GIF it would take to do that, though.

[CJCRANE]

14. It's interesting how the whole "red state" and "blue state" idea became fixed from 2000 onwards.

I tend to think it was a Rovian "divide and conquer" strategy.

[BKH70041]

15. LBJ's influence in Texas could explain both elections.

Just a consideration.

[MineralMan]

16. That could be. The focus of the two major parties

has changed over time, too. In the modern period, I can be nothing but a Democrat.

[BlindTiresias]

17. So...

What are you trying to argue here?

[MineralMan]

18. I'm sorry. Not every post is an argument for something.

This one is purely historical in nature.

Arguments are down the hall and to the left. This is the History office.

[BlindTiresias]

19. well you must be drawing some kind of conclusion from this, right?

[MineralMan]

21. A conclusion? No.

It's interesting that political leanings of different states appear to have changed in the past 50 years, to some degree. Beyond that, it's just information about those changes. I've actually looked at all of those electoral maps that are on Wikipedia. I find them instructive and interesting.

History is interesting in itself. I'm not even looking to draw conclusions. I asked about Texas, and then realized that Texas was the home of LBJ, which may well have been the reason for it being blue back then. I also know about the prevalence of southern Democrats and how the Democratic party has changed over the decades.

Sometimes, information is just information. I hope you'll draw your own conclusions from the information.

[Gman]

20. In Texas at that time as it was in the South

the democratic party dominated. This map doesn't reflect it but Democrats dominated at all levels of government. The general election was decided in the Democratic primary. There was only one party in the south, the Democratic Party as the hatred for the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, lasted for over 100 years. at the time we would joke in Texas that Texas was a two party state, liberal Democrats and conservative Democrats. In 1960, JFK was revered in South Texas, especially in the Mexican-American community but he was hated in North Texas (Dallas). But in '60 LBJ was on the ticket so there was no doubt how Texas would vote as he controlled all things politics. And the same was true with HHH in ''68 being LBJ's VP. But by '68 things were starting to change. Conservative Democrats were moving to the GOP due in large part to the civil rights legislation of the 60's and Nixxon's southern strategy. 6 years later Texas would elect its first Republican governor since Reconstruction and the GOP was on the rise in Texas and the South. The last time Texas' electoral votes went to a Democrat was Carter, a southerner in '76.

[MineralMan]

24. Thanks for that background.

[joeybee12]

23. Dixiecrats vs Country Club Republicans...

How times have changed.

[jtuck004]

25. Oklahoma in that picture above was one of the most heavily Democratic states in the nation.

Extraordinarily Progressive, they would not elect a Republican as governor until 1968.

In 1970 I remember the parents, most of whom were Democrats, urging their kids to beat up the black kids that were bused to school. We had a riot, had police, fire, etc. Sometimes labels are just labels.

[AZ Progressive]

26. How about even more recently

Carter 1976:


Bill Clinton 1992:


Bill Clinton 1996:

[MineralMan]

27. History is always interesting.

[hedgehog]

28. I think this may be a case where red and blue oversimplifies things -

neither the Democratic nor Republican Parties were then as they are now. Nixon's Southern Strategy is largely responsible for the toxic politics in play today.It was more important to win than to uphold American values.

[BumRushDaShow]

31. Lee Atwater

Joe Madison (black talk show host on SiriusXM Urban View) plays this clip often -

[Odin2005]

33. Before 1964 the Dems were a racist reactionary party in the South.

[Jim Lane]

34. Also notable in 1960: Southern states going red

Historically, the "Solid South" was the Democratic bastion. Republicans won electoral votes there only when they were doing so well nationwide that the tide even swung some Southern states -- for example, in 1952 and 1956, because of Eisenhower's popularity.

The 1960 election marks the beginning of the enormous change. From the Wikipedia article on the Solid South, with emphasis added:

In the 1960 election, the Democratic nominee, John F. Kennedy, continued his party's tradition of selecting a Southerner as the vice presidential candidate (in this case, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas). Kennedy and Johnson, however, both supported civil rights. In October 1960, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested at a peaceful sit-in in Atlanta, Georgia, Kennedy placed a sympathetic phone call to King's wife, Coretta Scott King, and Robert Kennedy helped secure King's release. King expressed his appreciation for these calls. Although King made no endorsement, his father, who had previously endorsed Republican Richard Nixon, switched his support to Kennedy.

Because of these and other events, the Democrats lost ground with white voters in the South, as those same voters increasingly lost control over what was once a whites-only Democratic Party in much of the South. The 1960 election was the first in which a Republican presidential candidate received electoral votes in the South while losing nationally. Nixon carried Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida.

Incidentally, "Daddy" King's initial endorsement of Nixon highlights a fact many liberals probably don't know: Until approximately this time, blacks in the South strongly tended to support "the party of Lincoln" while the whites were Democrats.

Nixon, of course, saw the potential for change. His infamous "Southern Strategy" was to appeal (in a genteel way) to the white racists, even if that meant giving up this historic black support. You can see the first stirring of that reversal in the 1960 map.