1960 United States presidential election

Presidential electoral votes by state.

The United States presidential election of 1960 marked the end of Dwight D. Eisenhower's two terms as President. Eisenhower's Vice-President, Richard M. Nixon, who had transformed his office into a national political base, was the Republican (GOP) candidate.

The Democrats nominated Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy (JFK). He was only the second Roman Catholic to become a major-party presidential candidate (the other was Democrat Al Smith in 1928). Kennedy charged that America was falling behind the Soviet Union in the Cold War, both militarily and economically. The vote was the closest in any presidential election dating to 1916, and Kennedy's margin of victory in the popular vote is among the closest ever in American history. The 1960 election also remains a source of debate among historians as to whether vote theft in selected states aided Kennedy's victory.

Nominations

Republican Party Nomination

President Eisenhower was the first to be barred by the 22nd Amendment from being elected president again; he had been elected in 1952 and 1956. In 1960 he remained highly popular, and most historians believe that if he could have run for a third term he would have won.

In 1959 it looked as if Vice President Richard M. Nixon might face a serious challenge for the GOP nomination from New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the leader of the GOP's moderate-liberal wing. However, Rockefeller announced that he would not be a candidate for president after a national tour revealed that the great majority of Republicans favored Nixon. After Rockefeller's withdrawal, Nixon faced no significant opposition for the Republican nomination. At the 1960 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Nixon was the overwhelming choice of the delegates, with conservative Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona receiving 10 votes from conservative delegates. Nixon then chose former Massachusetts Senator and United Nations Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. as his Vice Presidential candidate.

Democratic Party Nomination

File:Nytimes1960electionpage.jpg

New York Times front page from two days after the election: November 10, 1960.

The following political leaders were candidates for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination. With the exceptions of Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Adlai Stevenson, these men were "favorite-son" candidates without any realistic chance of winning the nomination:

• Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy
• Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson
• Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey
• California Governor Pat Brown
• Ohio Governor Michael DiSalle
• New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner
• Oregon Senator Wayne L. Morse
• Florida Senator George A. Smathers
• Missouri Senator Stuart Symington.
• Illinois Former Governor Adlai Stevenson

Recalling the experience of 1928 Catholic Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith, many wondered if anti-Catholic prejudice would affect Kennedy's chances of winning the nomination and the election in November. To prove his vote-getting ability, Kennedy challenged Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, a liberal, in the Wisconsin primary. Although Kennedy defeated Humphrey in Wisconsin, the fact that his margin of victory came mostly from heavily Catholic areas left many party bosses unconvinced of Kennedy's appeal to non-Catholic voters. Kennedy next faced Humphrey in the heavily Protestant state of West Virginia, where anti-Catholic bigotry was said to be widespread. Humphrey's campaign was low on money and could not compete with the well-organized, well-financed Kennedy team. Kennedy's attractive sisters and brothers combed the state looking for votes, leading Humphrey to complain that he "felt like an independent merchant running against a chain store." On primary day Kennedy crushed Humphrey with over 60% of the vote. Humphrey withdrew from the race and Kennedy had gained the victory he needed to prove to the party's bosses that a Catholic could win in a non-Catholic state. In the months leading up to the Democratic Convention the Kennedy campaign organization, led by JFK's younger brother Robert Kennedy, steadily accumulated the delegate votes they needed to win. However, as the Convention opened Kennedy was still a few dozen votes short of victory.

Democratic Convention

The 1960 Democratic National Convention was held in Los Angeles. In the week before the convention opened, Kennedy received two new challengers when Lyndon Johnson, the powerful Senate Majority Leader from Texas, and Adlai Stevenson II, the party's nominee in 1952 and 1956, announced their candidacies. However, neither Johnson nor Stevenson were a match for the talented and highly efficient Kennedy campaign team led by Robert Kennedy. Johnson challenged Kennedy to a televised debate before a joint meeting of the Texas and Massachusetts delegations; Kennedy accepted. Most observers felt that Kennedy won the debate, and Johnson was never able to expand his delegate support beyond the South. Stevenson was popular among some liberal delegates, especially in California, but his two landslide defeats in 1952 and 1956 had led many party leaders to look for a fresher candidate. Kennedy won the nomination on the first ballot. Then, in a move which surprised many, he made Johnson his running mate. To this day there is much debate regarding the details of Johnson's nomination - why it was offered and why he agreed to take it. Some historians believe that Kennedy actually wanted Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington State as his running mate, and that he offered the nomination to Johnson first only as a courtesy to the powerful Senate Majority Leader. According to this theory, Kennedy was then surprised when Johnson accepted second place on the Democratic ticket. Another story is that, after Johnson had accepted the nomination, Robert Kennedy went to Johnson's hotel suite to dissuade Johnson from becoming the nominee. Johnson was offended that "JFK's kid brother" would brashly urge him to stay off the ticket, and called JFK to confirm that the vice-presidential nomination was his. JFK then reaffirmed that he wanted Johnson as his running mate, but both Johnson and Robert Kennedy were so embittered by the experience that they began a fierce personal and political feud that would have grave implications for the Democratic Party in the 1960's. Whatever the truth behind Johnson's nomination, the move proved to be a masterstroke, as Johnson vigorously campaigned for Kennedy and helped him carry several Southern states, especially his home state of Texas.

The presidential tally

John F. Kennedy	806
Lyndon Johnson	409
Stuart Symington	86
Adlai Stevenson	79.5
Robert B. Meyner	43
Hubert Humphrey	41
George A. Smathers	30
Ross Barnett	23
others	3

Unpledged Electors

Many Southern Democrats were opposed to the national Democratic Party's platform on supporting civil rights and voting rights for African-Americans living in the South. 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 Democratic or Republican presidential candidates 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. In the end only the six unpledged Alabama electors and eight Mississippi unpledged electors refused to support Kennedy for President.

General election

The Fall Campaign

President Dwight D. Eisenhower greets President-elect John F. Kennedy, December 1960.

A crucial factor in this election were the first televised presidential debates; the debates were a disaster for Nixon. On a campaign visit to Greensboro, North Carolina in late August, Nixon had injured his knee on a car door. The knee became infected, and Nixon was forced to miss several days of campaigning while antibiotics were injected directly into the infected knee. When Nixon left Walter Reed Hospital, he insisted on making up for lost time and spent the weeks leading up to the first debate in an exhausting series of campaign trips. By the time the debate started Nixon had lost weight, was wearing a suit which was too large (due to his weight loss), and appeared ill and haggard on television. Nixon also refused television makeup for the first debate, which caused his five o'clock shadow to show on the era's black-and-white television screens. In contrast, Kennedy appeared tanned and relaxed. It is a commonly repeated story that voters who had listened to the debate on radio thought Nixon had won, but the television audience (which was much larger than the radio audience) gave the win to Kennedy. The story itself may be apocryphal--the specific polls that demonstrate this discrepancy were 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. Before the first debate, most of the polls showed Nixon leading Kennedy by a slim margin; after the debate the polls reversed and showed Kennedy pulling ahead of Nixon. 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. Throughout the remainder of his life, Nixon would refuse to even look at videotape of the 1960 debates. A total of four debates were held, and while Nixon looked better in the remaining three debates (he regained his lost weight, and wore television makeup to hide his beard stubble), the audience for the three remaining debates was smaller than the first debate.

Nixon also made strategic errors. Accepting his party's nomination, he had stated "I announce to you tonight, and I pledge to you, that I, personally, will carry this campaign into every one of the 50 states of this nation between now and November the 8th." [1] Keen to emphasize the admission of Alaska and Hawaii into the Union during Eisenhower's presidency, this early pledge to campaign in each state wasted invaluable time as he was forced to spend time in states that he would win easily, states which he had no chance of winning and states which offered little reward in terms of electoral votes. Nixon's knee injury and subsequent lost campaign time made his pledge to visit all fifty states even more difficult and counterproductive, but Nixon refused to cancel his pledge. As such, Nixon found himself on the last weekend before the election visiting Alaska, which had only three electoral votes, while Kennedy toured large states such as Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Nixon was also badly hurt when President Eisenhower, whom he had loyally served for nearly eight years, made an offhand remark at a press conference in August. When a reporter asked Eisenhower if could name any specific advice from Nixon that he had heeded, Eisenhower said that "if you give me a week, I might think of one." Although Eisenhower and Nixon later claimed that Eisenhower was simply joking with the reporter, his remark hurt Nixon, especially given that one of Nixon's campaign themes involved his close working relationship with the popular Eisenhower. The Democrats would use Eisenhower's remark in a television commercial criticizing Nixon. [2]

Kennedy's religion played a major role in the 1960 campaign. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, had to rebut scurrilous rumors, particularly in the South and Midwest, that his election would mean that he would follow orders from the Pope in Rome. Kennedy delivered a successful speech before a meeting of Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas, pledging that he would not allow his church to control him in making public decisions. Nixon's Quaker faith was not a liability, despite its popular association with pacifism; Nixon had served in World War II, and he had a firm anti-communist record, both in congress and as vice-president. He was also a close friend of Billy Graham, a prominent evangelist, who helped Nixon by mobilizing his extensive contacts to support the Republican campaign; Graham, however, did not formally announce his support for Nixon. Norman Vincent Peale, another prominent Protestant minister, did publicly criticize Kennedy on religious grounds and indicated that he planned to support Nixon for that reason.

The main economic issue during the election was the Soviet Union'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 argued that America had become too complacent and comfortable under the Republicans, and that as President he would "get America moving again." Kennedy also claimed the Republican administration had allowed a missile gap to develop by not matching Soviet military spending. The claim was made plausible by Soviet superiority in the space program, evidenced by their successful Sputnik program and numerous United States launch failures. After he became President, Kennedy ordered a study of the "missile gap". The results of the study showed that there was a missile gap - but it was in America's favor, and that the U.S. held a wide lead over the Soviets in the number of nuclear missiles.

Two weeks before election day, most polls showed Kennedy leading Nixon by up to six percentage points, and most of the major news magazines - Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report - predicted a Kennedy victory. However, President Eisenhower, who had largely sat out the campaign up to that point, began a strenuous campaign swing for Nixon over the last ten days before the election, and Nixon began to climb in the polls. By election day most of the polls showed the two candidates as virtually even.

Results

The election on November 8 remains one of the most famous election nights in American history. As the early returns poured in from large Northern and Midwestern cities such as Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Chicago, Kennedy opened a large lead in the popular and electoral vote, and appeared headed for victory. However, as later returns came in from the Western states and rural and small-town areas in the farm belt and Midwest, Nixon began to steadily close the gap with Kennedy. It was not until the afternoon of Wednesday, November 9 that Nixon finally conceded the election and Kennedy claimed victory. A sample of how close the election was can be seen in California; Kennedy appeared to have carried the state by 37,000 votes when all of the voting precincts reported, but when the absentee ballots were counted a week later, Nixon came from behind to win the state by 36,000 votes. In the national popular vote Kennedy beat Nixon by just two tenths of one percentage point (0.2%) - the closest popular-vote margin of the twentieth century. In the electoral college Kennedy's victory was larger, as he took 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219 (269 were needed to win). Kennedy carried 11 states by three percentage points or less, while Nixon won 5 states by the same margin. 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. Interviewing people who voted in both 1956 and 1960, a University of Michigan team analyzing the election returns discovered that people who voted Democratic in 1956 split 33–6 for Kennedy, while the Republican 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 of holding their base than the Republicans by a razor-thin margin.

Controversies

Some Republicans - and later historians - have alleged that Kennedy benefited from vote theft, especially in Texas and Illinois. These two states are important because if Nixon had carried both, he would have won the election in the electoral college. Kennedy won Illinois by a bare 9,000 votes, and Mayor Daley, who held back much of Chicago's vote until late in the evening, gave Kennedy 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 National Chairman 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, a conservative Democrat, even though Byrd was not an announced candidate and did not seek their votes.

Electoral results

Presidential candidate	Party	Home state	Popular vote		Electoral vote	Running mate
			Count	Percentage		Vice-presidential candidate	Home state	Electoral vote
John Fitzgerald Kennedy	Democratic	Massachusetts	34,220,984(a)	49.7%	303	Lyndon Baines Johnson	Texas	303
Richard Milhous Nixon	Republican	California	34,108,157	49.5%	219	Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.	Massachusetts	219
Harry Flood Byrd	(none)	Virginia	—(b)	—(b)	15	James Strom Thurmond	South Carolina	14
						Barry Morris Goldwater(c)	Arizona	1(c)
(unpledged electors)	Democratic	(n/a)	286,359	0.4%	—(d)	(n/a)	(n/a)	—(d)
Other			216,982	0.3%	—	Other		—
Total			68,832,482	100%	537			537
Needed to win					269			269

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. "1960 Presidential Election Results". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved August 2, 2005. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |access-date= (help)

Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved August 2, 2005. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |access-date= (help)

^(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

• This was the first presidential election in which the new states of Alaska and Hawaii participated, and the last in which the District of Columbia did not participate. There were 537 electoral votes (had been 531 in 1956), because of the addition of 2 Senators and 1 Representative from each of the 2 new states (the House of Representatives membership was increased to 437 until it was reapportioned following the 1960 census).
• People who heard the first televised debate on the radio thought that Nixon when compared to the TV viewers who thought that Kennedy had won. This was a result of body language. Nixon was sweating while Kennedy was prepared and confident, taking notes while Nixon spoke.
• At 43, Kennedy was the youngest candidate ever elected President. Theodore Roosevelt was only 42 when he became President, but he only took the office upon the death of President William McKinley. Kennedy remains the youngest man ever to be elected President; he also remains the only Roman Catholic to become President, and he is the last President to be elected from the Northeastern United States.

See also

• Canada and the 1960 United States presidential election
• History of the United States (1945–1964)
• United States Senate election, 1960

Further reading

• Alexander, Herbert E. (1962). Financing the 1960 Election.
• Campbell, Angus; et al. (1966). Elections and the Political Order, statistical studies of poll data
• Dallek, Robert Gold (1991). "Chapter 16: The Making of a Vice President". Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960.
• Divine, Robert A. Foreign Policy and U.S. Presidential Elections, 1952-1960 1974.
• Fuchs, Lawrence H. (1967). John F. Kennedy and American Catholicism.
• Gallup, George H., ed. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971. 3 vols. Random House, 1972. press releases
• Ingle, H. Larry, "Billy Graham: The Evangelical in Politics, 1960s-Style," in Peter Bien and Chuck Fager, In Stillness there is Fullness: A Peacemaker's Harvest, Kimo Press.
• Kallina, Edmund F. (1988). Courthouse Over White House: Chicago and the Presidential Election of 1960.
• Kraus, Sidney (1977). The Great Debates: Kennedy vs. Nixon, 1960.
• Lisle, T. David (1988). "Southern Baptists and the Issue of Catholic Autonomy in the 1960 Presidential Campaign". In Paul Harper and Joann P. Krieg, ed. (ed.). John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited. pp. 273–285. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Nixon, Richard M. (1978). RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon.
• White, Theodore H. (1961). The Making of the President, 1960.