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The United States presidential election of 1960 marked the end of the eight years of Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency. Richard M. Nixon, who had transformed the office of Vice President into a national political base, easily won the Republican nomination. The Republican Party had been a minority party for 30 years, giving a strong advantage to the Democrats, who had solid control of Congress.

The Democrats nominated Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. He was only the second Catholic nominee in history. Kennedy charged that America was slipping behind in the Cold War, both militarily and economically. The vote was the closest in any presidential election dating to 1916.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

Vice President Richard M. Nixon faced little opposition for the Republican nomination. He chose former Senator and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. as his vice presidential candidate. Barry Goldwater was nominated for president, but declined to be considered and supported Richard Nixon.

Democratic Party nomination

Candidates for the nomination included:

Recalling the experience of 1928 Catholic Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith, many wondered if anti-Catholic prejudice would affect Kennedy's standing among non-Catholics. Kennedy's victory over Humphrey in the largely Protestant state of West Virginia proved decisive. Kennedy, with a youthful image and the aid of his father's Joseph P. Kennedy political skills, carried the nomination at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles. Kennedy selected Johnson, the Senate Majority Leader, as his vice presidential candidate to balance the ticket and secure Southern votes.

Unpledged electors
Many Southern Democrats were opposed to the national Democratic Party's platform on civil and voting rights. Both before and after the convention, they attempted to put unpledged Democratic electors on their states' ballots in the hopes of influencing the race: the existence of such electors might influence which candidate would be chosen by the national convention, and, in a close race, such electors might be in a position to extract concessions from either the Democrats or Republicans in return for their electoral votes.

Most of these attempts failed. Alabama put up a mixed slate of five loyal electors and six unpledged electors. Mississippi put up two distinct slates, one of loyalists and one of unpledged electors. Louisiana also put up two distinct slates, although the unpledged slate did not receive the “Democratic” label. Georgia freed its Democratic electors from pledges to vote for Kennedy, but popular Governor Ernest Vandiver, a candidate for elector himself, publicly backed Kennedy.

General election

Campaign

A crucial factor in this election was the first televised presidential debate. Nixon refused television makeup and appeared tired, especially in contrast to Kennedy. It is a commonly repeated story that voters who had listened to the debate on radio thought Nixon had won, but the television audience gave the win to Kennedy. The story itself may be apocryphal — the specific polls that demonstrate this discrepancy are never cited. But the broader point that the debate was an early indication of the power that television would come to have over American politics is indisputable. Nixon's negative experience in the debates caused him to shun debates in his 1968 and 1972 campaigns, and the next presidential debates would not be held until 1976. The polls did not show any significant change after the debates, and the press said the race remained too close to call.

The main economic issue during the election was the USSR's high economic growth rate in comparison to the United States'. According to analysis at the time, the Soviet economy was expected to overtake the American economy by 1984. Kennedy also claimed the Republican administration had allowed a missile gap by not matching Soviet defense spending and allowing the military to weaken. The claim was made plausible by Soviet superiority in the space program, evidenced by their successful Sputnik program and numerous United States launch failures. However, there is evidence there never was a gap as far as missiles were concerned.

Results

The November 8 election was extemely close-- Kennedy beat Nixon by two tenths of a percentage point (0.2%) in the popular vote. The New York Times, summarizing the discussion late in November, spoke of a “narrow consensus” among the experts that Kennedy had won more than he lost as a result of his Catholicism.New York Times, November 20, 1960, Section 4, p. E5 Interviewing the same people who voted in 1956 and 1960, the Michigan team discovered that the voters for Stevenson the Democrat in 1956 split 33–6 for Kennedy, while the Eisenhower voters of 1956 split 44–17 for Nixon. That is, Nixon lost 28% (17/61) of the Eisenhower voters, while Kennedy lost only 15% of the Stevenson voters. The Democrats in other words did a better job holding their base than the Republicans.

Controversies
Some Republicans alleged that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud especially in Texas and Illinois. There is no certainty that Nixon would have won both Texas and Illinois (which he would have had to do to win the electoral vote). What is certain, however, is that in Illinois, Kennedy won by a bare 9,000 votes, and Mayor Daley, who held back Chicago's vote until late in the evening, provided an extraordinary Cook County margin of victory of 450,000 votes. The Republican party urged Nixon to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of some of the votes for Kennedy, especially in the pivotal states of Illinois, Missouri and New Jersey, where large majorities in Catholic precincts handed Kennedy the election. Nixon publicly refused to call for a recount, saying it would cause a constitutional crisis. However, privately, he encouraged GOP Chair Thruston Morton to push for a recount, which Morton did in 11 states, keeping challenges in the courts into the summer of 1961; the only result was the loss of the State of Hawaii to Kennedy on a recount petitioned by the Kennedy campaign.

Alabama popular vote
The actual number of popular votes received by Kennedy is difficult to determine because of the unusual situation in Alabama. The first, minor issue is that, instead of having the voters choose from slates of electors, the Alabama ballot had voters choose the electors individually. Traditionally, in such a situation, a given candidate is assigned the popular vote of the elector who received the most votes. For instance, candidates pledged to Nixon received anywhere from 230,951 votes (for George Witcher) to 237,981 votes (for Cecil Durham); Nixon is therefore assigned 237,981 popular votes from Alabama.

The more important issue is that the statewide Democratic primary had chosen eleven candidates for the Electoral College, five of whom were pledged to vote for Kennedy, and six of whom were free to vote for anyone they chose. All of these candidates won, and the six unpledged electors voted against Kennedy. The actual number of popular votes received by Kennedy is therefore difficult to allocate. Traditionally, Kennedy is assigned either 318,303 votes (the votes won by the most popular Kennedy elector) or 324,050 votes (the votes won by the most popular Democratic elector); indeed, the results table below is based on Kennedy winning 318,303 votes in Alabama. However, if any reasonable attempt is made to allocate the popular vote between Kennedy electors and unpledged electors, a plurality of the popular vote goes to Nixon instead of Kennedy. For instance, if the 324,050 votes mentioned above were split 5 for Kennedy to 6 for unpledged electors, Kennedy would receive 147,295 votes in Alabama for a national popular vote of 34,049,976. In such a scenario, the unpledged Democratic electors would receive 463,113 popular votes: 286,359 from Mississippi and 176,754 from Alabama.

Unpledged Democratic electors
Fourteen unpledged Democratic electors won election from the voters. Because electors pledged to Kennedy had won a clear majority of the Electoral College, the unpledged electors could not influence the results. Nonetheless, they refused to vote for Kennedy. Instead they voted for Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, even though Byrd was not an announced candidate and did not seek their votes.

Source (Popular Vote):

Source (Electoral Vote):

(a) This figure is problematic; see Alabama popular vote above.
(b) Byrd was not directly on the ballot. Instead, his electoral votes came from unpledged Democratic electors and a faithless elector.
(c) Oklahoma faithless elector Henry D. Irwin, though pledged to vote for Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., instead voted for independent Harry F. Byrd. However, unlike other electors who voted for Byrd and Strom Thurmond as Vice President, Irwin voted for Barry Goldwater as Vice President.
(d) In Mississippi, the slate of unpledged Democratic electors won. They cast their 8 votes for Byrd and Thurmond.

Trivia

See also

Notes

Further reading

  • Campbell, Angus; et al. (1966). Elections and the Political Order, statistical studies of poll data
  • Divine, Robert A. Foreign Policy and U.S. Presidential Elections, 1952-1960 1974.
  • Gallup, George H., ed. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971. 3 vols. Random House, 1972. press releases

External links

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United States presidential elections | Close United States presidential elections | 1960 elections | 1960 in the United States | Irish American history

Elezioni Presidenziali degli Stati Uniti del 1960

 

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