What Could Have Been

''The 1964 Presidential Election is considered by many an oddity, in that the polls all got the election wrong. To be honest, they, the Johnson campaign, and even the Goldwater campaign could not have known that there was going to be an incredibly low turnout, that people were so confident Johnson was going to win, they simply turned off their televisions, their radios, and called it a night. And because of that train of thought, Goldwater by mere chance managed to make it into the Oval Office. President Goldwater. To me, it still makes me shudder to think of what he has done. Still, I was only a mere infant, and that is all in the past. Nothing can be changed now. However, it is interesting to ponder over what Lyndon Baines Johnson would have done in his stead. Clearly it would have been less radical and in many ways beneficial. This timeline goes over that possibility.''

The Presidential Election of 1964
Lyndon Baines Johnson is reelected President of the United States in a landslide, with Barry Goldwater only carrying the states of the Deep South (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida), Idaho, and his home state of Arizona.

''Editor's Note: Of course, this is entirely based on the speculation that the people voted exactly based on the polls produced by Gallup. To many, it was a shocking surprise, even to Goldwater himself, that state after state fell into his column. A state like Virginia was at least somewhat understandable, having conservative traditions. But others like Illinois? Ohio? New Hampshire? It sure was a rude awakening when Goldwater even carried Johnson's home state of Texas.''