A question about JFK that's more important than who killed him.

[nyquil_man]

4. I've always wondered what the '64 election would have looked like

if it had been Kennedy vs. Goldwater. I'd never really considered the idea of JFK surviving the assassination attempt, but I'm not sure it would have had a huge effect. Reagan's numbers shot up after he was shot but then declined rapidly.

To win in '64, especially against an opponent like Goldwater, Kennedy would have had to focus much more heavily on winning in the Midwest and on the West Coast than he had in 1960. Goldwater's base was in the South and in the Mountain States.

I think the end result would have been a comfortable Kennedy victory, with a map which looked more like our current political alignment than anything prior to that (or anything after that, for many years). LBJ's victory gave a sense of that sort of realignment, but his inflated margin concealed it and the national party's near collapse in 1968 & 1972 made it impossible to capitalize on it.

What would a second Kennedy term have been with a coalition closer to the one we have today?