Source: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mapp...

Texas hasn’t always been red. Fifty years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson — a Democrat from Texas — was re-elected president. His victory in the state was impressive; he earned more votes than Barry Goldwater in 238 of the 254 counties. He carried the cities of Houston, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, but he also won in extremely rural places like Oldham County, drawing 397 of its 670 total votes that year.

There was a harbinger for Texas’s Republican turn. Months before the 1964 election, Johnson signed landmark civil rights legislation into law. The Civil Right Act was progressive, but the president was well aware it would prove costly to his Democratic Party in some parts of the U.S. That evening, Johnson told his press secretary, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.” He was right.