1964, The Year Lower Merion Flipped To Blue
In 1964 there were no Democrats on the Lower Merion Township Board of Commissioners. Nor were there any Democrats on the School Board. The Township Treasurer was a Republican, as was the Justice of the Peace. And let’s not overlook Lower Merion’s representative in the state legislature. He was also a Republican.
By no coincidence, the number of registered Republicans in the township outnumbered Democrats – 29,528 to 7,754.
JFK lost Lower Merion by almost 2-1
In 1960, Democrats were more or less satisified to see their presidential candidate, John F. Kennedy, cut into the Republicans’ usual overwhelming majority in Lower Merion. Kennedy “only” lost to Richard Nixon in the township by 21,378 to 11,781.
1964 however, was a whole different story. Lower Merion Democrats thought their candidate, Lyndon Johnson, had a shot at winning the township.
Nate Silver wasn’t even born until 14 years after 1964, but that year, you didn’t need any mathematical models to know that on the national level, Johnson was going to slaughter Goldwater.
But the idea of Democrats winning anything in Lower Merion was inconceivable.
In 1936, while FDR was winning every state in the union, except for Maine and Vermont; Republican Alf Landon won Lower Merion quite easily, collecting 67.1% of the vote.
Lower Merion was Republican – period.
On the other hand, there were plenty of indications that the Johnson-Goldwater vote in Lower Merion would be closer than any other previous presidential election.
On September 17, 1964, The Main Line Times ran a story anouncing that Republicans for Johnson had opened a headquarters on Lancaster Avenue, in Haverford. The group was calling on the local electorate to vote for all the Republicans on the ballot, except for Goldwater. And on Election Day, Republicans for Johnson got exactly what they wanted.
In Lower Merion, Johnson – 17,280; Goldwater 15,686.
After the election, the curmudgeonly Ben Kramer (Uncle Ben) wrote in his Main Line Chronicle –
The old Main Line Communities such as Gladwyne, Haverford, Rosemont, Wynnewood, North Ardmore and a few others stuck with Goldwater, but the Negro districts went heavily for Johnson, also those districts which have become populated in recent years by Philadelphians went “all the way with LBJ.”
The latter vote, which is heavily Jewish, combined with the normal vote to give [Republican] Hugh Scott a big local majority.
The candidates for the legislative offices, such as Congressman, State Senator and State Representative came through all right, but pluaralities were greatly reduced.
Barry Goldwater lost Pennsylvania by almost 1.5 million votes. But U.S. Senator Hugh Scott not only won Lower Merion, he eked out a win statewide as well. The final results of Scott’s narrow victory over Democrat Genevieve Blatt, were not known until almost two weeks after Election Day, because – wait for it – 130,000 absentee ballots that had to be counted.
A thorough disgrace.
But there was some crazy tiket-splitting.