Vermont voters chose 3 electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson and his running mate, Senate Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey, against Republican challenger and Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona and his running mate and Chair of the Republican National Committee, William E. Miller.

Johnson's landslide margin of victory in this traditional Republican stronghold even made the state ten percentage points more Democratic than the national average in the 1964 election.

[2] Along with winning the state for the first time, Johnson was also the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Addison, Bennington, Caledonia, Rutland, Orange, Orleans, Windham and Windsor Counties.

However, in 1964 this streak came to an end when the GOP nominated staunch conservative Barry Goldwater, who was widely seen in the liberal Northeastern United States as a right-wing extremist;[3] 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.

As the GOP became increasingly dominated by Southerners, conservatives, and evangelicals, the 1964 election would foreshadow Vermont's modern-day status as one of the most Democratic and left-wing states in the nation.