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[[File:1960 Dem Primaries.svg|thumb|400px|1960 Democratic primaries results]]
The next step was the primaries. Kennedy's [[Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]] religion was an issue. Kennedy first challenged Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary, and defeated him. Kennedy's sisters, brothers, and wife Jacqueline combed the state, looking for votes, leading Humphrey to complain that he "felt like an independent merchant competing against a chain store
====Democratic convention====
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During the campaign, Kennedy charged that under Eisenhower and the Republicans, the nation had fallen behind the [[Soviet Union]] in the [[Cold War]], both militarily and economically, and that, as president, he would "get America moving again". The Eisenhower administration had established NASA in 1958, but Kennedy believed that the Republican Party had ignored the need to catch up to the Soviet Union in the [[Space Race]]. He promised that the new Democratic administration would fully appreciate the importance of space accomplishments for the national security and international prestige of the United States. Nixon responded that, if elected, he would continue the "peace and prosperity" that Eisenhower had brought the nation in the 1950s. Nixon also argued that, with the nation engaged in the Cold War with the Soviets, Kennedy was too young and inexperienced to be trusted with the presidency. Had Nixon been elected, at 48 years, 11 days, he would have been [[List of presidents of the United States by age|the fourth-youngest]] president at the date of inauguration. Kennedy, by contrast, was 43 years, 236 days, on the date of his inauguration; the second-youngest man to begin a Presidency. (At 42 [[Theodore Roosevelt]], who [[First inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt|assumed the Presidency]] upon the [[Assassination of William McKinley|assassination of United States President William McKinley]] 60 years previously, was (and remains) the youngest.)
During Kennedy's campaign, he relied on his youth and promised to bring about change. Kennedy had a slogan emphasizing his youth, reading, "who's seasoned through and through/but not so dog-gone seasoned that he won't try something new
===Campaign events===
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Kennedy and Nixon both drew large and enthusiastic crowds throughout the campaign.<ref>[[E. Thomas Wood]], {{cite news|url=http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2007/10/5/nashville_now_and_then_5oct2007|title=Nashville now and then: Nixon paints the town red|work=NashvillePost.com|access-date=October 6, 2007|date=October 5, 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080927034101/http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2007/10/5/nashville_now_and_then_5oct2007|archive-date=September 27, 2008|df=mdy-all}}</ref> In August 1960, most polls gave Nixon a slim lead over Kennedy, and many political [[Pundit (expert)|pundits]] regarded him as the favorite to win. However, Nixon was plagued by bad luck throughout the fall campaign. In August, President Eisenhower, who had long been ambivalent about Nixon, held a televised press conference in which a reporter, Charles Mohr of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', mentioned Nixon's claims that he had been a valuable administration insider and adviser. Mohr asked Eisenhower if he could give an example of a major idea of Nixon's that he had heeded. Eisenhower responded with the flip comment, "If you give me a week, I might think of one."<ref>Ambrose, Stephen E. (1991). ''Eisenhower: Soldier and President'', p. 525. Simon and Schuster. {{ISBN|0-671-74758-4}}.</ref> Although both Eisenhower and Nixon later claimed that he was merely joking with the reporter, the remark hurt Nixon, as it undercut his claims of having greater decision-making experience than Kennedy. The remark proved so damaging to Nixon that the Democrats turned Eisenhower's statement into a television commercial.<ref>{{cite web|title=Nixon's Experience? (Kennedy, 1960)|url=http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1960/nixons-experience|website=The Living Room Candidate|publisher=[[Museum of the Moving Image (New York City)|Museum of the Moving Image]]|access-date=25 August 2016}}</ref>
At the Republican National Convention, Nixon had pledged to campaign in all fifty states. This pledge backfired when, in August, Nixon injured his knee on a car door, while campaigning in [[North Carolina]]. The knee became infected, and Nixon had to cease campaigning for two weeks, while the infection was treated with [[Antibacterial|antibiotics]]. When he left [[Walter Reed Army Medical Center|Walter Reed Hospital]], Nixon refused to abandon his pledge to visit every state; he thus wound up wasting valuable time visiting states that he had no chance of winning,
Throughout the campaign, Nixon's unfriendly relations with the media, which dated back to the "Fund" scandal eight years earlier, were a persistent liability to him. The Washington D.C. press corps, around 100 members, were largely liberal Democrats and by nature inclined to favor Kennedy, but Nixon often made things worse with his mutually antagonistic attitude towards them. Many of Nixon's stump speeches were filled with folksy homilies that resonated with rural and small town Americans, but were distasteful to the elitist D.C. reporters. [[Mary McGrory]] of the [[Washington Post]] said he was "just so icky, so yucky, humorless, self-righteous and smarmy." However, more important than that was the adulation the press had for Kennedy; as the campaign drew to its terminal phase, this love of the Massachusetts Senator took on an almost messianic fervor. Kennedy was expert at utilizing this to his advantage and flattered reporters instead of arguing with them.
Nixon visited [[Atlanta]], [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], on August 26, and acquired a very large turnout to his event. He rode through a parade in Atlanta, and was greeted by 150,000 people.<ref>{{Cite news|title=The Nixon-Kennedy Campaigns In Georgia|last=Fleming|first=K|date=November 1960|work=The Atlanta-Journal and Constitution}}</ref> Nixon mentioned in his speech in Atlanta, "In the last quarter of a century, there hasn't been a Democratic candidate for President that has bothered to campaign in the State of Georgia."<ref name="presidency.ucsb.edu">{{Cite web|url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25759|title=John F. Kennedy: Speech by Senator John F. Kennedy, the Little White House, Warm Springs, GA|website=www.presidency.ucsb.edu|access-date=2017-03-01}}</ref> However, Kennedy would not let Nixon take the Democratic states that easily. Kennedy would change that statistic, and visit some surprising states, including Georgia. He visited the cities of [[Columbus, Georgia|Columbus]], [[Warm Springs, Georgia|Warm Springs]], and [[LaGrange, Georgia|LaGrange]] on his campaign trail in Georgia. In his visit to Warm Springs, state troopers tried to keep Kennedy from an immense crowd; however, Kennedy reached out to shake hands of those who were sick with [[polio]].<ref>{{Cite news|title=Cheering Throng Engulfs Kennedy|last=Galphin|first=B|date=October 11, 1960|work=The Atlanta Journal-Constitution}}</ref> He also visited small towns across Georgia and saw a total of about 100,000 people in the state. Kennedy also spoke at a rehabilitation facility in Warm Springs. Warm Springs was near and dear to Kennedy's heart, due to the effects the facility had on [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]]. Roosevelt spent time at the rehabilitation facility, and died there in 1945.<ref name="presidency.ucsb.edu"/>
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In Warm Springs, Kennedy spoke to supporters at the facility, and mentioned Roosevelt in his speech. He admired Roosevelt, and commended him for sticking up for the farmers, workers, small towns, big cities, those in poverty, and those who were sick.<ref name="presidency.ucsb.edu" /> He said Roosevelt had a "spirit of strength and progress, to get America moving".<ref name="presidency.ucsb.edu"/> Kennedy discussed his six-point plan for health care. He wanted a medical program set up for retirement, and federal funding for the construction of medical schools and hospitals. He also planned for the government to loan students money to attend medical school, and provide grants to renovate old hospitals. He called for more money to be spent on medical research and, finally, expand effort for rehabilitation and come up with new ways to assist those in need.<ref name="presidency.ucsb.edu"/> Many Republicans disapproved of Kennedy's plans and described them as an "appeal to socialism".<ref>{{Cite news|title=Kennedy's Plans Altered: Crowd of 50,000 Is Seen|last=Gaines|first=Marion|date=October 6, 1960|work=The Atlanta Journal-Constitution}}</ref> Nevertheless, many residents of Warm Springs were supportive of Kennedy, with women wearing hats reading "Kennedy and Johnson" and<ref>{{Cite news|title=Women Dressed in Support of John F. Kennedy's Presidential Campaign, Little White House, Warm Springs, Georgia|last=Johnson|first=Marion|date=October 10, 1960|work=The Atlanta Journal-Constitution}}</ref> signs around the town saying "Douglas County For Kennedy, Except 17 Republicans 6 Old Grouches".<ref>{{Cite news|title=A Sign of Votes at Warm Springs|last=Stovall|first=Hugh|date=October 11, 1960|work=The Atlanta Journal-Constitution}}</ref> Joe O. Butts, the mayor of Warm Springs during Kennedy's visit, said: "He must've shaken hands with everybody within two miles of him, and he was smiling all the time."<ref name=":1"/>
Eisenhower remained out of the fray until the general election in the fall, when it was agreed that he should take to the campaign trail in support of Nixon. The president was very much a party man, and although he had some antipathies towards his vice president, he badly wanted the White House to remain in Republican control and also feared that Kennedy was too young and inexperienced for the job. Eisenhower came out in a "cyclonic" campaign, making a series of fiery speeches in the swing states of New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in support of Nixon and denouncing Democrat charges that he had neglected military preparedness. As the poll numbers with Kennedy narrowed to a close, Eisenhower's "fall offensive" was cut short by his own wife. [[Mamie Eisenhower]] was horrified to hear of this and became convinced that he would kill himself due to his bad heart. She phoned Nixon and told him he'd better tell the president to stop this right now, before something happened. Nixon had a luncheon with Eisenhower on October 3, but he was unable to explain exactly why his help in this campaign wasn't needed, instead clumsily beating around the bush. Eisenhower was surprised and slightly annoyed, but agreed to stop campaigning.
Despite the reservations [[Robert F. Kennedy]] had about Johnson's nomination, choosing Johnson as Kennedy's running mate proved to be a masterstroke. Johnson vigorously campaigned for Kennedy, and was instrumental in helping the Democrats to carry several Southern states skeptical of him, especially Johnson's home state of Texas. Johnson made a "last-minute change of plans, and scheduled two 12-minute whistlestop speeches in Georgia".<ref>{{Cite news|title=Johnson Due in State Tonight|date=October 11, 1960|work=The Atlanta Constitution}}</ref> One of these visits included stopping in Atlanta to speak from the rear of a train at [[Terminal Station (Atlanta)|Terminal Station]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|title=New President Johnson An Old Friend to Georgia|date=November 23, 1963|work=The Atlanta Constitution}}</ref> On the other hand, Ambassador Lodge, Nixon's running mate, ran a lethargic campaign and made several mistakes that hurt Nixon. Among them was a pledge, made without approval, that Nixon would name at least one African American to a [[Cabinet of the United States|Cabinet]] post. Nixon was furious at Lodge and accused him of spending too much time campaigning with minority groups instead of the white majority.<ref>{{cite book |last=White |first=Theodore H. |title=The Making of the President, 1960 |date=2009 |publisher=HarperCollins |location=Pymble, NSW |isbn=978-0-061-98601-7 |page=297}}</ref>▼
▲Despite the reservations [[Robert F. Kennedy]] had about Johnson's nomination, choosing Johnson as Kennedy's running mate proved to be a
Nixon's inability to carry the African-American vote was another of many missteps in his campaign. Eisenhower had scored 40% of black votes four years earlier, and Nixon assumed he would perform as well with his strong support of civil rights. However, several missteps including the Lodge "pledge" and Nixon's refusal to comment on Martin Luther King Jr.'s arrest in Atlanta harmed his support with black voters. In addition to that, the Kennedy campaign drenched black churches with "soap" (bribe money) to buy votes. Attempts by the Nixon campaign to counter this were not very successful as they were out-spent three to one. Ultimately, Nixon won under 25% of the black vote on Election Day and strong black turnout for Kennedy in several important states including Illinois and South Carolina may have contributed to his defeat.
===Debates===
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=== Controversies ===
[[File:Richard Nixon 1960 Campaign Button.png|thumb|right|1960 Nixon campaign button]]
Nixon's campaign staff urged him to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of Kennedy's victory in several states, especially Illinois, Missouri, and New Jersey, where large majorities in Catholic precincts handed Kennedy the election.<ref name="wash post"/> Nixon gave a speech three days after the election, stating that he would not contest the election.<ref name="wash post"/> The Republican National Chairman, Senator [[Thruston Ballard Morton]] of Kentucky, visited [[Key Biscayne, Florida]], where Nixon had taken his family for a vacation, and pushed for a recount.<ref name="wash post"/> Morton challenged the results in 11 states,<ref name="salon"/> keeping challenges in the courts into mid-1961, but the only result of these challenges was the loss of Hawaii to Kennedy on a recount.
Kennedy won Illinois by less than 9,000 votes, out of 4.75 million cast, a margin of 0.2%.<ref name="salon"/> Nixon carried 92 of the state's 101 counties. Kennedy's victory in Illinois came from Chicago, which had favorable demographics for Kennedy, with its large populations of [[Catholic]] and [[African-American]] voters.<ref name="wash post von hippel">{{Cite news| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/08/heres-a-voter-fraud-myth-richard-daley-stole-illinois-for-john-kennedy-in-the-1960-election/| last = von Hippel| first = Paul| title = Here's a voter fraud myth: Richard Daley "stole" Illinois for John Kennedy in the 1960 election?| newspaper = [[The Washington Post]]| date = August 8, 2017 }}</ref> His victory margin in the city was 318,736, and 456,312 in Cook County.
In Texas, Kennedy defeated Nixon by a 51 to 49% margin, or 46,000 votes.<ref name="salon"/> Some Republicans argued, without evidence, that Johnson's formidable political machine had stolen enough votes in counties along the [[Mexico–United States border|Mexican border]] to give Kennedy the victory. Kennedy's defenders, such as his speechwriter and special assistant [[Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.]], argued that Kennedy's margin in Texas was simply too large for vote fraud to have been a decisive factor.
Earl Mazo, writing in the [[New York Herald Tribune]], argued that in Texas, "a minimum of 100,000 votes for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket simply were nonexistent." Allegations of voter fraud were made in Texas. [[Fannin County, Texas|Fannin County]] had only 4,895 registered voters; yet, 6,138 votes were cast in that county, three-quarters for Kennedy.<ref name="wash post"/> In an [[Angelina County, Texas|Angelina County]] precinct, Kennedy received 187 votes, to Nixon's 24, though there were only 86 registered voters in the precinct.<ref name="wash post"/> When Republicans demanded a statewide recount, they learned that the state Board of Elections, whose members were all Democrats, had already certified Kennedy as the winner.<ref name="wash post"/> This analysis has been challenged, since registered voter figures only counted people who had paid the [[Poll taxes in the United States|poll tax]],and "veterans and senior citizens and some other isolated groups" were exempt from that tax.<ref>''The Houston Chronicle'', April 13, 2012, [https://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Vote-ID-law-is-a-waste-of-money-3481335.php "Vote ID law is a waste of money"] by Terri Burke</ref>Earl Mazo's analysis produced evidence of voters casting up to six ballots at once, precinct chiefs bribing voters, and pre-primed voting machines, one of which was caught recording 121 ballots when 43 people voted.
Schlesinger and others have pointed out that even if Nixon had carried Illinois, the state would not have given him a victory, as Kennedy would still have won 276 electoral votes, to Nixon's 246. More to the point, Illinois was the site of the most extensive challenge process, which fell short, despite repeated efforts spearheaded by Cook County state's attorney, Benjamin Adamowski, a Republican, who also lost his re-election bid. Despite demonstrating net errors favoring both Nixon and Adamowski (some precincts, 40% in Nixon's case, showed errors favoring them, a factor suggesting error, rather than fraud), the totals found fell short of reversing the results for the candidates. While a Daley-connected circuit judge, Thomas Kluczynski (later appointed a federal judge by Kennedy, at Daley's recommendation), threw out a federal lawsuit "filed to contend" the voting totals,<ref name="wash post"/> the Republican-dominated State Board of Elections unanimously rejected the challenge to the results. Furthermore, there were signs of possible irregularities in downstate areas controlled by Republicans, which Democrats never seriously pressed, since the Republican challenges went nowhere.<ref>''Slate'', October 16, 2000, [http://www.slate.com/id/91350/ "Was Nixon Robbed? The legend of the stolen 1960 presidential election"] by David Greenberg</ref> More than a month after the election, the Republican National Committee abandoned its Illinois voter fraud claims.<ref name="salon"/>
An academic study in 1985<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kallina |first1=Edmund F. |title=Was the 1960 Presidential Election Stolen? The Case of Illinois |journal=Presidential Studies Quarterly |date=Winter 1985 |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=113–118 |jstor=27550168 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27550168 |access-date=19 November 2020}}</ref> later analyzed the ballots of two disputed precincts in Chicago which were subject to a recount. It found that while there was a pattern of miscounting votes to the advantage of Democratic candidates, Nixon suffered less from this than Republicans in other races, and, furthermore, the extrapolated error would only have reduced his Illinois margin from 8,858 votes (the final official total) to just under 8,000. It concluded there was insufficient evidence that he had been cheated out of winning Illinois
A special prosecutor assigned to the case brought charges against 650 people, which did not result in convictions.<ref name="wash post"/> Three Chicago election workers were convicted of voter fraud in 1962, and served short terms in jail.<ref name="wash post"/> Mazo, Nixon's conservative reporter friend, later claimed, without evidence, that he "found names of the dead who had voted in Chicago, along with 56 people from one house".<ref name="wash post"/> He claimed to have found cases of Republican voter fraud in southern Illinois, but said that the totals "did not match the Chicago fraud he found
Nixon's personal decision not to challenge the electoral results came despite pressure from Eisenhower, his wife [[Pat Nixon|Pat]], and others. He explained in his memoirs that he did not do it for a number of reasons, one of them being that every state had different electoral laws, and some had no provisions for a vote recount. Consequently, a recount of the votes, if it was even possible, would take months, during which time the nation would be left without a president. Furthermore, Nixon feared that it would set a bad precedent for other countries, especially the Latin American states ("every pipsqueak politician down there would start claiming fraud when he lost an election"). "I had no doubt that had the results been the other way around, Kennedy wouldn't have hesitated to challenge the election."
▲A special prosecutor assigned to the case brought charges against 650 people, which did not result in convictions.<ref name="wash post"/> Three Chicago election workers were convicted of voter fraud in 1962, and served short terms in jail.<ref name="wash post"/> Mazo, Nixon's conservative reporter friend, later claimed, without evidence, that he "found names of the dead who had voted in Chicago, along with 56 people from one house".<ref name="wash post"/> He claimed to have found cases of Republican voter fraud in southern Illinois, but said that the totals "did not match the Chicago fraud he found".<ref name="wash post"/> After Mazo had published four parts of an intended 12-part voter fraud series documenting his findings, which was re-published nationally, he said: "Nixon requested his publisher stop the rest of the series so as to prevent a [[constitutional crisis]]."<ref name="wash post"/> Nevertheless, the ''Chicago Tribune'' (which routinely endorsed GOP presidential candidates, including Nixon in 1960, 1968, and 1972) wrote that "the election of November 8 was characterized by such gross and palpable fraud as to justify the conclusion that [Nixon] was deprived of victory".<ref name="wash post"/>
=== Popular votes ===
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