The staunch conservative Barry Goldwater was widely seen in the liberal Northeastern United States as a right-wing extremist;Donaldson, Gary; Liberalism’s Last Hurrah: The Presidential Campaign of 1964; p. 190 he had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Johnson campaign portrayed him as a warmonger who as president would provoke a nuclear war.Edwards, Lee and Schlafly, Phyllis; Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution; pp. 286-290 Thus Goldwater performed especially weakly in liberal northeastern states like Massachusetts, and for the first time in history, a Democratic presidential candidate swept every Northeastern state. Not only did Johnson win every Northeastern state, but he won all of them with landslides of over 60% of the vote, including Massachusetts, which weighed in as the third most Democratic state in the nation.
