An Old Combination

Happy days, as Franklin Roosevelt's theme song went, were here again. And they got here again in a way that F.D.R. could well have appreciated: a Democratic candidate, partly by force of personality, partly by piecing back together the power blocs that had been shattered by Republican Dwight Eisenhower, was the U.S.'s President-elect.

Democrat Jack Kennedy won by 1) rolling up huge pluralities in the big cities of the states that counted most, and 2) by holding on to most of the restive but still Democratic South.

Big-City Trend. One by one, the U.S.'s major cities gave Kennedy votes enough to assure victory in key states. Time after time, Richard Nixon inched back in nonmetropolitan areas--but rarely by enough. By pre-election estimates, Philadelphia had to go to Kennedy by at least 200,000 for him to win in Pennsylvania; the city went by 326,000. Although Nixon won 52 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, the state went down the drain for the Republicans. Kennedy carried New York City with 63% of the vote, far more than enough to take New York State's 45 electoral votes. Nixon ran well in outstate Michigan--but Kennedy grabbed a big lead in Detroit and held on. It was Los Angeles--always considered Nixon's stronghold--that gave Kennedy California.

In states where the metropolitan trend was either slowed or reversed, the results proved how much Kennedy depended on the city vote. New Jersey had been figured as a landslide for Kennedy--largely on the basis of a pre-election estimate of at least a 100,000 Kennedy plurality in Jersey City. But the Hudson County machine fell down on the job--and Kennedy had the scare of his life. Again, Ohio was figured as a Kennedy cinch--but Cleveland fell short of its expected Democratic plurality, and the state went to Nixon.

What happened in the cities to give Kennedy his vast advantage? In many ways it was a reversion to voting habits temporarily obliterated by the personal popularity of Dwight Eisenhower. As in Roosevelt's day, ethnic, racial and religious minorities once again voted heavily Democratic. It was also in the cities that Kennedy's personality caught on most decisively. There were strong indications that Eisenhower, had he started campaigning three weeks before Election Day, might have stemmed the tide: his Cleveland appearance was almost certainly a major factor in saving Ohio for Nixon.

Southern Help. Just as Kennedy won where he had to win in the big industrial states, so he won where he had to win in the South and Southwest. As expected, he lost Florida, Virginia and Oklahoma; in races figured beforehand as tossups, he also lost Kentucky and Tennessee. But, despite the win of an independent electors' ticket in Mississippi, he handily carried Texas and South Carolina, which had been predicted for Nixon. During the campaign, many observers had thought--and said--that Republican Henry Cabot Lodge was a positive asset to his ticket while Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson was a drag on his. Nixon repeatedly stressed Lodge's presence; Kennedy often acted as though he had never heard of Johnson. Yet in the final votes there were few signs that Lodge had helped the Republicans in any specific way--and there was plenty of evidence that Johnson had helped the Democrats overcome otherwise compelling difficulties in the South.

The farm states of the Midwest and beyond reverted to Republican type--almost as though Ezra Taft Benson had never existed. In Kansas and Iowa, Nixon not only won but carried along Republican state candidates to victories over favored Democrats. In the Far West Nixon also did nicely--except in crucial California.

How Much Religion? In Election Year 1960, the great imponderable was the issue of religion. For months to come, the pundits and statisticians will still be analyzing the effects of that issue. But in its general outlines, the answer was clear. Democrat Kennedy's Catholicism was certainly a factor in his favor in the big cities, where Catholics are most heavily concentrated, though the Catholic vote was not so monolithic as the Kennedys had hoped; e.g., in Wisconsin's traditionally Republican but heavily Catholic Fox River Valley, the tendency was more toward party than faith. At the same time, an anti-Catholic vote may well have been decisive against Kennedy in such states as Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Oregon. But in many Protestant areas--both North and South--Kennedy's Catholicism seems not to have worked against him. Kennedy, as New York Timesman James Reston aptly put it, "appealed to the loyalty of the Catholics and the conscience of the Protestants."

Pointing to the future, the victory of Jack Kennedy taught some campaign lessons that should not be forgotten. After the national conventions, he was generally considered to be trailing. But in his campaign he began aggressively, continued aggressively and finished aggressively. It was this that gave him the edge in the four television debates against Nixon. Republican Nixon had planned his campaign too carefully, with the aim of building up toward a last-minute surge. In the final week of the campaign Nixon almost certainly closed the gap between himself and Kennedy--but it was too late with too little.

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